Title

Wage Wizard

Date of Award

6-8-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2022.

Departments

General Engineering; Computer Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Silvia Figueira

Second Advisor

Jes Kuczenski

Third Advisor

Nam Ling

Abstract

Wage theft is a severe problem in Santa Clara County, with the Santa Clara Wage Theft Coalition identifying more than 25,000 local wage theft cases as of 20211. In this study we will be addressing the issue of wage theft particularly in the Santa Clara County caregiving industry. Wage theft is prevalent in the caregiving industry for several reasons. First, the industry employs many migrant Filipino workers who are unaware of their legal rights and protections or even the fact if they are experiencing wage theft or not. Second, the sizable undocumented portion of these workers are coerced to lower pay and unsustainable working conditions through threat of deportation. Lastly, these workers commonly lack documentation of their work hours which is imperative in proving instances of wage theft in court.

To aid in the defense of these workers in wage theft court cases while maintaining user privacy, we have developed a mobile application that relies on on-device geofencing to automatically record hours spent at a workplace, generate and store logs of work sessions and expected payments, as well as provide access to relevant, reliable, and comprehensible wage theft resources. Our mobile application was developed in close communication and collaboration with workers from the local community in order to better grasp the issue of wage theft as well as capture our project’s requirements. Our application was developed with user accessibility and privacy as guiding priorities, to appropriately suit the unique needs of our target user group.

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