Abstract
Labor standards violations undermine job quality. However, evidence on violation prevalence is limited: inspection-based administrative data incompletely covers violations when workers do not complain, and survey data provides limited measures of violations. Our understanding of the connection between violation and subsequent worker complaints is even more constrained. We use a unique survey of workers in the retail and food service industries to directly measure violations and worker complaints. We find high rates of violations affecting 38% of workers, with 31% experiencing serious violations of minimum wage, overtime pay, and uncompensated time. But workers rarely complain: only 26.5% of those experiencing violations complain, primarily to management. Just 1.4% of workers with violations report to state or federal agencies. The complaint / compliance gap reflects worker concerns about retaliation. However, unions reduce this gap substantially: unionization is associated with an eight-fold increase in complaint rates to the government.