I've had pay withheld for months, sudden massive pay cuts, rent spikes (residential jobs), in fact well over half of my previous bosses still owe me salary that I will never see. One job I had to quit because my boss refused to give me time to heal from work-inflicted RSI and I ended up getting carpal tunnel. I still deal with it today. The BBB has never followed up and lawyers are expensive for a young adult living on their own. This is America!
The BBB will be useless in this case. If your state has a department of labor, you can file a complaint with them; often, just going reporting your employer's practices doesn't require a lawyer. You can also try to go to small claims court yourself to recover back pay, if the amount doesn't exceed the small claims limit; small claims is usually pretty DIY friendly (as far as legal processes go).
I've considered small claims but it's just never been worth it. And that's the margin in which these kind of people operate. As far as the BBB, that was really only one specific incident where it made sense to involve them. I was trying to disparage a boss for holding pay for the entire staff for a month and tried involving numerous organizations but he ended up getting away with it scot-free. I think not paying taxes eventually caught up with him though because that place was recently leveled. Looking back there was surely something I could have done to better escalate the situation but I was a dumb kid.
Yeah, I don't blame you. That is, unfortunately, how the system fails us; young people who don't know their rights or people of any age who are desperate to keep their jobs are really vulnerable to exploitation by shitty bosses who know that the balance of power is skewed in their favor. But that's a conversation for another thread, probably...
