For Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries, tackling wage theft involves more than just collecting unpaid wages. It also involves deterring wage theft from happening in the first place. That’s why the bureau may issue penalties to employers who investigators determined have unlawfully denied workers pay. But actually collecting those penalties has proven difficult for labor officials. While the agency has recovered just 41% of wages and penalties overall in the last eight years, a recent InvestigateWest analysis found, employers pay penalties at a much lower rate. From 2015 through 2020, employers in aggregate paid less than $1 of…
