Enforce minimum wage jobs - End illegal ads for unpaid or illegally underpaid work

I am writing today to protest illegal job offers of unpaid work, and work offered at below the minimum wage. These abusive offers are rampant, and laws against them are unenforced.

It is hard enough to stay competitive and make a living. Meanwhile, I face a daily insult of these illegal job offers at all skill levels.

This is far more widespread than illegal abuse of internships. These illegal offers now comprise a huge number of all job offers posted by employers. Prospective employers counter that such “jobs” offer experience, but only non-profit organizations may legally offer any unpaid positions other than fully-qualified student internships, and only then by also meeting rigorous legal restrictions.

These laws are not being enforced. Employers are exploiting a frightened workforce. This exploitation both sabotages the workforce's capacity to make a living, and drags the economy's health in general. No one has money to spend when they earn nothing!

Ads that solicit workers for unpaid jobs are illegal commercial speech. The ads mislead job-seekers to consider unpaid and other illegally low-paid jobs, even though by law, workers must be paid at least minimum wage, and in most states, must also be paid overtime.

I hereby petition you to use your office to enforce current laws, and stop this illegal practice, in all its forms. While such ads are currently rampant in media such as newspapers and internet sites (including job search sites and classified ads) we expect enforcement across any and all media.

It is important to stop this practice at the time of the illegal job’s offer, since enforcement after the fact is so slow-going, that that route does not serve the starving worker, whose bills meanwhile stay unpaid. Employers who offer or pay anything less than minimum wage must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Failure to enforce existing law and stop the practice of employers offering and advertising unpaid or illegally underpaid work will erode both the workforce and the economy – perhaps irretrievably.

Enforce the law now! Prosecute and fine ALL employers who offer or advertise sub-minimum wage jobs!