The headline, “How companies rip off poor employees and lax enforcement lets them get away with it” graced the pages of the Chicago Sun Times on May 4. Similar calls for prosecutors to aggressively go after wage payment noncompliance—including failing to correctly pay overtime, allocate benefits, or classify workers—as if it were “theft” have been reported throughout the country with increasing frequency in recent years.

Prosecutors have answered the call. Government wage-related enforcement—focused particularly on the construction industry—is gaining momentum, and the repercussions for construction companies’ wage-and-hour compliance failures are only intensifying in both the civil and criminal realms. Indeed, as the focus has intensified, wage and hour non-compliance has increasingly drawn criminal charges, leaving employers fearful of fines, regulatory actions, and, in some cases, incarceration.

  • Wage-and-Hour Compliance Veers Toward the Criminal Realm