Uber, Lyft Withheld Billions in Pay, California Alleges. Settlement Talks Are Underway.

Exactly this. Any kind of settlement does a massive disservice to the people whose wages were stolen.

When people complain about white collar crime going unpunished, this is exactly what they’re referring to. Wage theft is larger than every other form of theft combined. It literally accounts for more than 51% of all theft. But it largely goes unpunished, and is treated like a civil issue instead of criminal.

If a cashier steals $100 from the cash register, they’ll be leaving their shift in handcuffs. But if that same company routinely and systematically steals $100 from every single employee by rounding their timesheets down, netting them millions of dollars in excess profits by the end of the fiscal year… It’s treated as a civil issue, the business gets fined 10% of the profits they made, and the individual employees see virtually none of it after the lawyers get their take. The company treats it as a cost of doing business, and changes nothing in the future.