IRLE Colloquia Series presents:

Rebecca Galemba and her talk on Un-Just Wages: Wage Theft and Day Labor in Colorado.

The DU Just Wages Project, led by Professor Galemba, recently released results from a two year qualitative and quantitative study on wage theft experienced by day laborers in the Denver metro area. From 2015-2017, she led teams of DU graduate and undergraduate students in collaboration with community partners (El Centro Humanitario, Sturm College of Law, and Towards Justice) to conduct qualitative interviews and participant observation with 170 workers. Research teams also conducted interviews with legal agency staff, lawyers, non-profits, employers, and policymakers in order to understand the larger context in which wage theft operates. The qualitative study followed with a survey (with assistance from Dr. Randall Kuhn) of 400 day laborers coupled with Know Your Rights outreach at street corner hiring sites.

Wage theft most frequently manifested in terms of workers being paid less than they were promised and outright non-payment for work completed. 62% of day laborers had ever experienced wage theft; 19% in the 6 months prior to being surveyed. The research uncovered common patterns employers use to cheat workers out of earned wages, as well as strategies that day laborers, lawyers, state agencies, and non-profits use to recoup wages. The research found that workers had low levels of legal knowledge, but that any outreach must also be coupled with more proactive policy to hold employers and frequent industry violators accountable to make these rights actionable. Limitations within the intersection of immigration and labor law makes it difficult for low-wage immigrant workers to pursue redress while working in day labor itself poses risks of downward integration in terms of wages, working hours, and exposure to wage theft.

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Rebecca Galemba is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Her research interests include border studies, migration, informal and illicit economies, and the intersections between immigration and work. Her first book, Contraband Corridor: Making a Living at the Mexico-Guatemala Border, was published by Stanford University Press in December 2017. Her most recent projects involve students in community-based research on immigration and labor issues in Colorado. In May of 2017, she received the University of Denver’s Public Good Faculty of the Year Award, recognizing the integration of service-learning and the public good into her teaching and research.