Summary
The settlement allows affected workers to recover up to 2.5 times the value of unpaid wages.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul reached a settlement on Wednesday with a Chicago-area meat processing company over unpaid overtime wages. The Attorney General filed a consent decree resolving a lawsuit the office filed against Greenridge Farm in Elk Grove Villages.
“Any company doing business in the state of Illinois must follow laws that require employees to be fairly paid for the time they work,” said Raoul. “This settlement sends a message that employers cannot get away with evading Illinois law. I appreciate the United States Department of Labor’s collaboration, and I am committed to holding businesses – large and small – accountable for violating laws that safeguard workers and support law-abiding businesses in Illinois.”
The settlement requires the company to pay $3 million dollars in back wages and damages to resolve allegations that Greenridge failed to pay overtime wages to over 282 current and former employees.
“Wage theft” is estimated by government findings to be far and way the most impactful form of theft in the country. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report determined approximately $19 billion were stolen in unpaid wages, unresolved overtime bonuses and minimum wage violations in the year of 2012, considerably outpacing the combined value of $13.5 billion lost to larceny ($5.3B), burglary ($4.1B), robbery ($0.34B) and auto theft ($3.8). More recent conservative annual estimates value current wage theft losses closer to $15 billion. The federal government has struggled to tamp down on criminal violations of labor laws over the years, however.
Per Wednesday’s settlement agreement, as compensation for the theft, Greenridge Farm will be expected to pay back up to 250% of wages owed to workers. Greenridge also agrees to overhaul its payroll process with third-party payment monitoring, and is to be kept under watch by the Attorney General’s office for three years.
