It's an invisible epidemic -- and because people are so desperate to have and keep a job, some employers are taking full advantage of the hard economic times. Lynn Stuart Parramore at Alternet:

Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and taking a terrible toll. We’re talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they’re getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year.

The laws protecting workers are grossly inadequate, and wage thieves go unpunished. For giant companies like Walmart, Citigroup and UPS, getting fined is just the cost of doing business. You could even say that they're incentivized to cheat because punishment is so unlikely, and when it happens, so light. The protections we used to take for granted, like the right to receive at least the minimum wage, the right to workers’ compensation when hurt on the job, and the right to advocate for better working conditions, are nothing more than a quaint memory for many Americans. Activist Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America,calls it a "national crime wave."

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No, not your attitude. She really thinks you need to bathe more. I'm completely serious.

AFL-CIOblog:

High school gym, where listening to lectures on personal hygiene was part of the package. It's one thing for a gym teacher to tell a bunch of sweaty teenagers to hit the showers. But it's something quite different when the U.S. secretary of labor tells Parade magazine-a national weekly read by millions of Americans-the nation's workers need a bath if they want to keep their jobs.[..]

Chao told Parade it's not just the low-cost of foreign labor that is enticing many U.S. employers to ship jobs overseas-overseas workers dress and bathe better.

Beyond the cheaper cost of labor, U.S. employers say that many workers abroad simply have a better attitude toward work. "American employees must be punctual, dress appropriately and have good personal hygiene," says Chao.

Alex Bastani, AFGE Local 12 president,[..] noted that in 2004, Chao's Labor Department changed the rules on who qualifies for overtime pay and millions of workers were robbed of their rights to overtime pay. Just this year, she tried to outsource some 250 Department of Labor jobs but was unsuccessful.

Members of the AFGE Local 12 chapter will be at Department of Labor headquarters passing out the above-pictured bars of soap. And I would be remiss to not remind you who is Chao's (presumably clean-smelling) husband...

The Social Security system will take in more money annually than it pays out in benefits until 2020, two years later than earlier estimated, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday in a modest change unlikely to alter the growing political debate over the program. Congress' budget analysts also estimated the program's trust funds will be depleted in 2052, "meaning that beneficiaries will be able to count on receiving only 78 percent of their scheduled benefits beginning then.

So the figures of impending doom by 2018 were false, and the figures of certain doom by 2042 were false. You've gotta hand it to the White House. They certainly know how to cry wolf to push along the agenda. The problem is now that their think tanks will be working overtime to filter in this information for his speech on Wednesday. I'm sure "owner society "and "personal accounts" will be the cornertone of this part of the address. The other big question I have is will Charles Krauthammer be part of the speechwriting team this time?