Maybe some of you can clarify something for me. It is not "lawful" to employ someone and then refuse to pay them. In fact, that's pretty much a sure fire way to get into a whole lot of legal trouble irrespective of how poor of an employee or how poorly they performed as your employee.
So under what set of exceptions does our federal government, who by the way created and enforces the original laws protecting workers rights (U.S. Department of Labor), get to violate the laws that would get any other employer sanctioned, in the very least?
And just as an aside, if you are employed by a company in the City of Seattle and your employer refuses to pay you, you can file a police report and have your employer investigated and criminally prosecuted for failing to pay you. There are several things I admire about the City of Seattle proper and this is one of them:
Wage Theft
Employers can be criminally prosecuted for failing to pay wages promised to their workers. If an employer is convicted of the gross misdemeanor, the City can also revoke the employer's business license.
A worker who believes he/she has been paid less that the minimum wage, or forced to work off the clock, or not paid for all the hours work, or not paid the amount promised, or not paid overtime, can file a complaint by:
SPD will investigate and forward its report to the Criminal Division for a decision on whether to file the charge. Then Criminal Division attorneys will work with the victim toward making a provable case.
To strengthen its efforts against wage theft, the City agreed recently to share information and coordinate enforcement efforts with the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor.
"Enforcement of wage theft crimes is much more than just recovering money owed to the worker who earned it," City Attorney Pete Holmes says. "Holding employers accountable for wage theft is a matter of preserving human dignity and protecting those who are most vulnerable in our community."
Wage Theft - CityAttorney | seattle.gov