Employers' Grand Theft.

      We are always hearing our UK lords and masters, the millionaire cabal, spouting about being tough on crime. Top of their list are “benefit cheats”, though when it comes to fraud ,this group is small-fry. Benefit fraud compared to tax avoidance, is just a fraction. According to the DWP the amount lost through benefit fraud is £1.2 billion a year, but according to HMRC, the amount lost to the treasury through tax avoidance is approximately £30 billion a year, though other experts put the figure much higher. However, the smaller of the two gets pursued through the courts, while regards the larger one, we are told that the government is looking at ways of dealing with that. Benefit fraud is actually much smaller than errors in the system. The amount over paid by the DWP department errors is £2.2 billion, and the amount under paid by department errors, £1.3 billion. So what this means is that if they eradicated errors and benefit fraud tomorrow, and paid people what they were due, the benefit bill would rise. Therefore, economics would suggest that we let the "benefit cheats" carry on as usual and concentrate on the big boys, the tax avoidance mob.

        Another form of fraud that doesn't get much coverage from the powers that be, is wage theft. Figures released in the USA show that 64% of low wage workers have cash stolen from their pay packets by their employers every week. This figure includes 26% who are paid less than the minimum wage, approximately 75% of workers due overtime rates have part or all of that stolen by their employers. The figures also show that the average low wage worker is robbed by their employer of a staggering $2,634 per year in unpaid wages, which works out at about 15% of their salary. Remember, if you're a low paid worker, you are probably on or near the breadline, yet these greedy bastards steal from you.

      Although these figures are for the USA, I have no reason to believe that our UK employers are any less unscrupulous than their American counterparts. It is par for the course, exploit the employee, cheat them of as much of their agreed pittance and maximise your profit. It's called capitalism.

Vi9sit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk