Labor Rights
How to document wage theft before you file a complaint
Pay stubs, time records and saved texts are what turn a suspicion about unpaid wages into a claim an investigator can act on.
The current edition
Labor Rights
Labor Rights covers the rules that govern a job and what happens when they break: wage and hour enforcement, safety investigations, discrimination suits and misclassification fights. Each story is anchored to a filing, an inspection or a docket.
Wage theft, workplace safety, discrimination, misclassification and the enforcement agencies workers rely on, tracked through cases and data.
Labor Rights
Two OSHAs: why a violation costs more in some states
More than 20 states run their own OSHA plans with their own penalty schedules. California's 2025 numbers show how wide the spread from federal maximums can be.
Labor Rights
The 30-day deadline for safety retaliation complaints
Section 11(c) gives safety whistleblowers 30 days to file with OSHA and no day in court: what the protection covers, how the process runs, and where it stops.
Labor Rights
The $165,514 citation: OSHA's maximums and what gets paid
Statutory penalty maximums anchor the headlines, but settlement practice and reduction policy decide what employers actually pay. A reading of the 2025 numbers.
Labor Rights
The six factors that decide contractor status, and who uses them
The 2024 economic-reality rule is on the books but unenforced by its own agency: a plain guide to the six factors and which test applies where.
Labor Rights
The contractor rule is suspended for investigators, not for courts
The Labor Department's May 2025 non-enforcement of the 2024 independent contractor rule changed who applies the economic-reality test, not what the test says.