As a campaign to raise the minimum wage as high as US$15 has achieved victories in such places as Seattle, Los Angeles and New York, it has bumped up against a harsh reality: plenty of scofflaw businesses don’t pay the legal minimum now and probably won’t pay the new, higher wages either.

Some economists, labour activists and regulators predict that without stronger enforcement, the number of workers getting cheated out of a legal wage is bound to increase in places where wages rise.

Estimates on the size of the problem vary, but the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in 2014, roughly 1.7 million US workers — two thirds of whom were women — were illegally paid less than the federal minimum of US$7.25 per hour.

Other studies put the number higher. A report by the Department of Labor in December estimated that in New York and California alone, there are 560,000 violations of the law every week, representing US$33 million in lost income.

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Buenos Aires Herald