The 45-year-old electrician was yanking old wires from the walls of a middle school in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, when he found out his paycheck had bounced. He had been working 10 hours a day, six days a week on the school renovation project. That call was the beginning of the electrician’s thus far unsuccessful quest to get an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. A Center for Public Integrity analysis of Labor Department data shows that companies that rely on low-wage workers are most likely to get caught cheating their employees.
