Cheating workers out of their just wages is as old as the written word - and probably older.

As long as rules have been written down, there have been instructions about how to treat workers and their work. Apparently, not everyone was listening, because the lesson has been told and retold and taught and taught again, yet workers continue to be shorted in their paychecks or pay envelopes, and they have been forced or coerced into working overtime for nothing, or they were not paid at all.

Now, it’s called wage theft and some legislators are trying to make it more difficult to cheat workers out of their just compensation. It probably will not be eliminated.

Both houses of the New York State Legislature have passed their own versions of the “Wage Theft Prevention Act” (WTPA), which aims to prevent such wage theft by punishing theft with greater penalties. Right now, any employer who withholds wages, overtime pay, meals, or other benefits, such as a day of rest, can virtually get away with criminal behavior because the usual penalty is that the lost wages be paid.

As the end of 2010 nears, both the Senate and Assembly have passed their versions of the bill, but they have yet to reconcile the two versions in preparation for moving the bill to the governor for his signature. And, since the legislature continues to have great difficulty tackling any tough decision-making, it’s appears that the bill will not be signed into law this session.

The bill not only will protect individual workers, but it will have a great impact on their communities, as well. According to the National Employment Law Project, about 300,000 workers in New York City are cheated out of $18.4 million each week. The estimate is that the city loses some $956 million each year from the stolen wages.

Workers spend their money in the city, right in their neighborhoods most of the time, while the employers who have stolen the wages spend it on Wall Street, in some warm island hideaway, or in some mountain retreat on the other side of the country or on some other continent.

That’s a great loss to the city and there are many thousands of workers in other parts of New York who suffer the same indignity. The WTPA will help those individuals and their communities. The same thing is repeated, state after state, community after community.

It’s good that people of faith are working with unions and the labor movement to help right this wrong. In the past few years, Interfaith Worker Justice has made wage theft a primary concern in their list of issues.

The practice is so old that there are many references to mistreatment of workers and the theft of their just compensation in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

For example, in James 5: 4, it warns: “Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.” And, another even warns against cheating work animals out of their just portion of the harvest: In Deuteronomy 25: 4, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out grain.”

Of course, these instructions use the agricultural analogy because, until the last 100 years, the majority of the population of most countries throughout history was engaged directly or indirectly in farming or the selling of agricultural goods. But the analogy holds right up to our times of computerization and information technology. It doesn’t make any difference what the work is; the worker should be paid promptly for work done.

Opponents of the WTPA can ask why New York or any other state needs more of a law than the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which provided for a federal minimum wage. It also allowed a higher wage standard to be set by the states, which is why some states have a minimum wage higher than the federal wage. But the FLSA provides little penalty for those who steal wages.

Wage theft is more difficult when workers are represented by a union. The union would file a grievance if the member were not paid what was provided in the contract. But many workers, particularly low-wage workers, in some of the toughest jobs around, are vulnerable. Food service workers, nursing home aides, home health aides (especially those who work for private contractors), farm workers, and those in meatpacking industries, and other food processing industries are vulnerable.

Many of these workers, especially in the past few decades, are at a disadvantage because their first language is not English. The WTPA provides that the pay structure must be explained in both English and the primary language of the workers at the time of hire. Even so, they are vulnerable because they fear that, if they complain, they might lose their jobs. To compound the problem, many are not documented and they fear many things in their new country, wage theft sometimes being among the lesser fears.

A worker in New York City told a Daily News columnist earlier this year that his employer promised to pay him $600 for working six 12-hour days, which he did. That comes out to $8.33 an hour, but when he was paid, he got $300, which is just half the promised pay and it is far below the minimum wage and certainly not enough to provide a decent living. That’s wage theft, and a typical example of it.

Those on the right, who oppose the WTPA and voted against it, may be doing so precisely because many of the victimized workers are undocumented. They can say and have said as much - that the undocumented don’t deserve the protection of U.S. laws. Fortunately, their position is not the majority position. If it were, the ideal America would be even further beyond our reach as a nation of workers. America needs a federal version of the WTPA, not the piecemeal, state-by-state effort that it seems to be.

A major problem remains in putting the law into effect: If we can’t investigate the rampant theft of wages and benefits under the laws as they exist, how are we to enforce the new law in a time of cutbacks, slashing of budgets, and the sharp reductions in staffing for agencies such as the Department of Labor?

What should accompany passage of the WTPA is a plan to use the dwindling resources of state government to ensure that workers are paid their just wages, because without enough staff, the Labor Department will not be able to do proper enforcement and follow up on worker complaints.

Employers who steal from their workers could take the position with WTPA that they did before: Because of the government’s lack of investigative staff, they’ll just take the chance that they won’t ever get caught. Punishment may be a little more costly now, but there is a good chance that they’ll never get caught.

Issues like wage theft are a clear indication why there is such a cacophony from the right for “smaller government.” They do not want any protection for the most vulnerable workers. They must be opposed on this issue.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.