Like most bullies, scammers are cowards, targeting and picking on those who seem especially vulnerable. Sadly, the elderly have long been a demographic that scammers view as easy targets. Often isolated and living on a fixed income, NCL’s annual Top Scams Report consistently lists the elderly as the age group most likely to be the victim of a fraud.

Over the past year, NCL’s Fraud Center has seen an increase in complaints from consumers over the age of 65, but a study released earlier this month shows just how severe the problem has grown. The study, conducted by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, found that financial abuse of older Americans has increased by 12 percent over the last three years, causing about $3 billion dollars in loses annually.

The study also revealed that:

• The majority of victims were between the ages of 80 and 89, lived alone, and required help with health care or home maintenance.
• Almost 60 percent of the perpetrators were male
• Women were targeted twice as often as men.
• Victims were particularly vulnerable during the holidays.

Crimes in which the perpetrators were strangers to the victim accounted for the majority of cases (51 percent), but family members or friends committed a whopping 34 percent of crimes against the elderly. Twelve percent of crimes were from the business sector, and four percent were from Medicare or Medicaid fraud.

If you are concerned that a senior might be falling victim to financial abuse, contact the National Center on Elder Abuse or report it to NCL’s Fraud Center at www.fraud.org.

Michell K. McIntye recently joined the staff of the National Consumers League as the Project Director for NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft. What is wage theft? Wage theft is the term for a complex and growing problem: employers who illegally underpay their workers. This happens not only to low-wage workers, but also to the middle class, especially since the top two types of wage theft are unpaid overtime and employee misclassification. NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft seeks to raise awareness about the nature of wage theft in the United States and strives to educate workers, consumer, governments, and businesses about wage theft issues and its solutions.

By Michell K. McIntyre, Project Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

Wage theft is a growing problem, as evidenced by many recent media stories on the issue. For example, in Ohio, thousands of adults with Down syndrome, autism, and other developmental disabilities are working at jobs that pay less than the minimum wage, with a majority working for less than half of the state minimum of $7.40 an hour. Some earn as little as 40 cents an hour for cleaning hotel rooms, while others sew table linens for a mere 79 cents an hour. A recent exclusive in the Ohio Dispatch brought this glaring injustice to light.

In America, how can anyone pay someone less than a dollar for an hour’s work?

Unfortunately, a little-known provision in the 73-year-old federal wage law allows employers to pay less than minimum wage if adults have disabilities that limit their productivity. The Fair Labor Standards Act was written in 1938, when people’s views of the disabled were limited to institutions and the population was labeled as “idiots,” “imbeciles,” or “morons” based on IQ scores.

But today, when we know and understand more about both worker’s rights and the disabled, how can we let this provision stay on the books?

Its time to update this law and right this egregious injustice! Learn more about wage theft by following NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft on Twitter and Facebook.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

In the United States each year, 40,000 users of table saws sustain serious injuries; 10 percent of those injuries are amputations, and that number is up approximately 10,000 injuries over the past decade. The injuries are painful, traumatic, and life-altering events for victims and their families. But what is hard to believe is that, as all of these grave injuries that are racked up year in and year out, there’s been a foolproof, highly effective technology to prevent 99 percent these injuries available since 2003. The only problem is that the conventional sawmakers have refused to adopt the safety technology.

That’s not surprising. In my work in product safety industries often resist adopting available and affordable safety devices that protect their customers. The reasons are varied, but none are defensible in my view – if there’s a safety technology to protect people from such terrible injuries as finger amputations and arms nearly sliced in half (and grisly deaths, I might add. There are a number of those too in the database – I’ve seen the pictures) and it’s affordable, it should be adopted as soon as possible. Imagine arguing that its not needed or wanted by consumers. I cannot.

I learned about the epidemic of table saw injuries in 2004 when I heard a story by National Public Radio’s Chris Arnold. At the time I was senior product safety counsel at Consumers Union and passionately working to get dangerous products removed from the market. I was shocked – both at the harrowing injury statistics and that the makers of the safety technology had no luck getting any of the saw manufacturers to license the safe saw design. I figured once this story ran, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would take up the issue and require the table saw safety technology on its own accord.

How wrong I was. Last summer I heard Chris Arnold’s follow-up story, six years after the first one; I learned to my shock and horror that the safety technology has never been adopted while table saw injuries have been climbing over a ten-year period. We consulted NCL policy on product safety, adopted in 2000, and it is crystal clear and touches every important aspect of this issue:

• NCL supports strong and effective government regulatory and enforcement agencies to assure safety of services and products used by consumers and the environment in which they are used.
• NCL believes that corporations have a responsibility to assure that safety and universal design be built into product and service design.
• NCL supports consumer education and information to teach safe behavior but recognizes that consumer education is never an acceptable substitute for quality safety standards and careful design and production;
• NCL urges that diligent enforcement of safety standards be carried out by private as well as public groups;
• NCL encourages prompt gathering of injury data by the public and private sectors in order to identify trends, inform consumers, and take appropriate actions to address safety concerns.

In consultation with our Board of Directors, NCL wrote in November of last year to the five commissioners at the Consumer Product Safety Commission urging them to begin the regulatory process toward a mandatory safety performance standard for table saws that is technology neutral – which means not endorsing any one technololgy. Such a safety standard dictates what the result must be – safety in using the product during regular use – not how you get there. Then, in February of this year, USA Today featured an article on the hazards of table saws, which prompted CPSC Commissioner Bob Adler to bring the makers of the safe saw, SawStop, into Washington for a meeting. The industry representatives, the Power Tool Institute, also presented to Commissioner Adler, arguing they couldn’t adopt the technology because it too expensive to implement especially in the smaller saws.

Sally Greenberg speaks to reporters about table saw dangers at the National Press Club on May 25.

In the latest development, this week NCL escorted four men from three different states around Washington. Each of them had personal interactions with table saw injuries – three had serious injuries themselves, including amputations and a mangled right arm that may never function normally, and one owned a cabinetmaking shop where two of his workers had their hands maimed by the saws; three of them knew about the safety technology when they bought their saws; two couldn’t afford a higher-end saw (and ran small businesses on the side while holding other jobs,) and the shop owner had tried to buy two saws before they were on the market. They are all deeply sorry they didn’t have safe saws.

We visited four of the five CPSC Commissioners, a number of senators and several members of the House of Representatives. At the end of this grueling three days, these guys – who had never met before this week, were like brothers. They heard one another’s stories time and time again and all were asking that all table saws sold in the United States be subject to a mandatory safety standard.

We got positive feedback from the Chairman of the CPSC, Inez Tenenbaum, who told us she believes they have the votes to open an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. That very important regulatory process is the first move toward a mandatory standard, if one is to be adopted.

And we are ready for the predictable resistance from industry – but that ship has sailed. NCL will invite 100 victims of saw accidents to come to Washington if need be – and with them, pictures of their bloody and painful injuries. They all have a story to tell – about dreams destroyed, careers ruined, livelihoods in jeopardy, being forced to go on welfare, food stamps, and energy assistance because they can’t make a living – and the constant pain and suffering they endure because of one millisecond slip into the blade of a table saw. All the while, they could have been kept safe by currently available technology. Once the real story gets out, no one will be able to argue that making the most dangerous product in the workshop the safest isn’t a cause worth fighting for – and winning.