Wage Theft

Illinois recently passed a law that helps tighten the screws against employers who skip out on paying employess. Here’s the news story about protecting workers from wage theft.

Now, this is great news for powerless, ethical employees who had the misfortune of getting employed by unethical employers.

But what about the other worker/employer combinations? You know:

unethical employee / unethical employer
unethical employee / ethical employer
ethical employee / ethical employer

Seems to me that the law gives unthical employees a bye at the expense of the employer (regardless of the employer’s ethics). So what we get looks like this:

ethical employee / unethical employer – Law is good news!
unethical employee / unethical employer – Law is unnecessary; these two deserve each other!
unethical employee / ethical employer – Law is decidedly anti-business!
ethical employee / ethical employer – Law creates an extra risk factor for businesses

The upshot?

Since you cannot legislate ethical behavior, I see another HR form in employees’ futures here in Illinois, and maybe a little more creativity on the part of both employers and employees as they learn ways to get around or abuse the law, respectfully.

The one thing I don’t see, however?

Better employee/employer relationships.

Which is too bad, since that’s the one thing that could make this issue moot.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.