The Examiner published a doozy the other day about San Francisco businesses exploiting deportation fears to dramatically underpay their workers:

Over the past seven years, [San Francisco Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement] records show that some of San Francisco’s best-known employers, including Safeway, McDonald’s, Big Lots, Subway, Martha & Bros. Coffee Shop and We Be Sushi, have short-changed workers by as much as $4.1 million.

That money has been reimbursed to more than 2,500 employees — many of them undocumented.

Workers included janitors, baristas, maids, delivery van drivers and home care providers. They wash uniforms, turn down beds, operate whirring meat dicers and tend bubbling vats of oil — often for just $5 an hour. Some worked overtime for months without receiving a single paycheck.

There are 308 business total that have broken minimum wage laws, including Mission Street's Mi Tierra Market that “was paying workers $250 to $400 a week to work 12-hour days, six days a week.”

[Examiner | photo by Orpheum Photography]