[dimva]

Wage theft is committed by millions of employers, this "theft" was committed by just a few people. While I agree with your general sentiment, the resources required to prosecute wage theft would be vastly greater than to prosecute this case.

That being said, they should definitely prosecute wage theft much more than they are now. Maybe the fear of jail time if wage theft were actually prosecuted a few times would deter most other potential wage thieves.

[burkaman]

I don't really agree, prosecuting all wage theft would be an enormous effort, but this story is not about prosecuting all book "theft", just one case. The argument is that the resources spent on this one case would have been better spent on investigating and prosecuting wage theft, not solving the entire issue.

Also, wage theft seems to be a much simpler thing to prosecute. You don't have to investigate the owners of anonymous websites or track down any foreign nationals, just show up to a job site, see how long people are working, see how much they're paid, and prosecute if the numbers don't match. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but it's a much more tangible, sort of "old-fashioned" crime, one I would imagine the FBI is pretty good at solving.

[DoingIsLearning]

> Wage theft is committed by millions of employers...

Yes, and of those there are a handful doing it to millions of employees. Wage theft is not a few night shifts rounded off at SMEs. Plenty of traded companies doing it, no reason why you cannot target low numbers of big fish.

[JumpCrisscross]

> there are a handful doing it to millions of employees

Has someone credibly identified them?

[DoingIsLearning]

Both Walmart and Amazon are notorious for disregarding minimum wage laws as an example of 'big fish'. With the fines usually applied this is just the price of doing business for these companies.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/275064-supreme-...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22262294/amazon-flex-wage-...

[1letterunixname]

Will never happen just like how undocumented migrants are exploited by meat processing plants while being de-facto shielded from deportation... because corporations and money talk.

[WeylandYutani]

In my country wage theft is committed on migrant labour.

Western Europe is not much different than Quatar in that respect only nobody cares.

[kwhitefoot]

You are right that it happens, but people do care and enforcement is improving in at least several countries like the UK and Norway.

[loloquwowndueo]

The world starts caring when the Olympics or World Cup come to a country. I hadn’t even heard about Qatar prior to them hosting the World Cup.

[FormerBandmate]

The Olympics and World Cup have come to Western Europe (e.g. England, France, Norway, Spain) over and over again

[achenet]

Never been to Norway or Spain, but England and France are generally okay w.r.t. migrant labor. Not saying there isn't some hostility to foreigners, because ceterus paribus you'll get many more job interviews with a CV that says "Jean-Pierre Petit" than "Mohammed Karkar" in France, but there is no "temporary worker visa" that we can use to basically exploit peoples from poor countries. If you get a visa that lets you work, you generally get the same protections/wages as locals :)

[tomp]

Are the immigrants' passports confiscated so that they cannot leave?

If you genuinely believe that, why don't you move to Qatar?

[retconn]

Instead, how much would it cost for the IRS to check everyone's returns reconciliation against employer statements?