21 research outputs found
Enforcing City Minimum Wage Laws in California: Best Practices and City-State Partnerships
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California’s Hero Labor Law: The Private Attorneys General Act Fights Wage Theft and Recovers Millions from Lawbreaking Corporations
More than a century ago, before there was a national legislative consensus around paying workers a fair day’s wage, California took the lead to establish minimum wage and working conditions for workers. Since then, the state has remained a national standard bearer, enacting laws that help workers recover stolen wages, access paid leave from work, and enforce safe and humane working conditions.However, these rights fail to deliver economic security to working Californians unless accompanied by strong enforcement mechanisms. Workers lose an estimated 56.4 million per week to wage theft violations when employers fail to pay minimum wage and overtime or provide meal and rest breaks.In addition, with the rapid expansion of forced arbitration by employers, workers’ ability to pursue justice in court through class-action lawsuits has been severely undercut. Two-thirds of non-union workers in California have already lost the right to sue, and the number is projected to grow.5 In this context, it is critical that the state has adequate capacity to investigate, prosecute, and monitor employers who skirt the law.Fortunately, when California enacted the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) in 2003, the state established an innovative model for enforcing workplace rights — a model that other states are now considering. The Private Attorneys General Act allows workers to bring a representative action in the name of the state and recover civil penalties for violations of the California Labor Code, even if they’ve signed a forced arbitration agreement. These cases also allow the state to collect millions of dollars in penalties from lawbreaking employers who would otherwise profit from exploiting workers. As this report details, in 2019, the state collected over $88 million in PAGA penalties.Through new data supplied by California’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), as well as assessments of practitioners, this brief explores PAGA’s impact on California’s workforce. While some employer-backed lobby groups have articulated strong concerns about PAGA, we find no evidence of a negative effect on the economy or a flood of frivolous litigation. Instead, PAGA has boosted the economy by helping California workers, especially those workers most vulnerable to workplace exploitation, fight wage theft. PAGA has demonstrably enhanced Labor Code compliance among employers, built enforcement capacity among state agencies, and ensured that violations of the law have a meaningful remed
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Workers as Health Monitors: An Assessment of LA County’s Workplace Public Health Council Proposal
This report examines the costs and benefits of an innovative LA County proposal to recruit frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19 transmission. The proposal requires businesses to permit employees to form public safety councils who meet with management to plan and troubleshoot compliance and report regularly to the DPH
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Enforcing City Minimum Wage Laws in California: Best Practices and City-State Partnerships
As cities begin to implement these minimum wage laws, the critical question of how best to enforce them rises to the forefront. Delivering on the promise of higher wages hinges on our ability to put robust enforcement systems in place to fight the chronic wage theft that low-wage workers experience far too often
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Workers as Health Monitors: An Assessment of Los Angeles County’s Workplace Public Health Council Proposal
The County of Los Angeles faces an extraordinary task in the coming weeks as it attempts to reduce its record COVID-19 rates while fostering a beleaguered economy. Health officials observe that workplaces throughout LA County are focal points of transmission, as enforcement of public health orders has lagged in a climate of desperation and fear. Lack of access to information and inadequate reporting mechanisms for public health order violations, particularly LA County’s detailed, industry-specific “Reopening Safer at Work and in the Community” (County Health Order) jeopardize public health and economic recovery. Meanwhile, the County’s Department of Public Health (DPH) lacks sufficient investigators to pose a credible threat of a compliance check at the county’s 244,000 businesses.This report examines the costs and benefits of an innovative LA County proposal to recruit frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19 transmission. The proposal requires businesses to permit employees to form public safety councils who meet with management to plan and troubleshoot compliance and report regularly to the DPH. Workers who participate would be free from retaliation. The DPH in turn would designate organizations to convene, train, and assist public health councils to spot and report violations
Recommended from our members
California’s Hero Labor Law: The Private Attorneys General Act Fights Wage Theft and Recovers Millions from Lawbreaking Corporations
More than a century ago, before there was a national legislative consensus around paying workers a fair day’s wage, California took the lead to establish minimum wage and working conditions for workers. Since then, the state has remained a national standard bearer, enacting laws that help workers recover stolen wages, access paid leave from work, and enforce safe and humane working conditions.However, these rights fail to deliver economic security to working Californians unless accompanied by strong enforcement mechanisms. Workers lose an estimated 56.4 million per week to wage theft violations when employers fail to pay minimum wage and overtime or provide meal and rest breaks.In addition, with the rapid expansion of forced arbitration by employers, workers’ ability to pursue justice in court through class-action lawsuits has been severely undercut. Two-thirds of non-union workers in California have already lost the right to sue, and the number is projected to grow.5 In this context, it is critical that the state has adequate capacity to investigate, prosecute, and monitor employers who skirt the law.Fortunately, when California enacted the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) in 2003, the state established an innovative model for enforcing workplace rights — a model that other states are now considering. The Private Attorneys General Act allows workers to bring a representative action in the name of the state and recover civil penalties for violations of the California Labor Code, even if they’ve signed a forced arbitration agreement. These cases also allow the state to collect millions of dollars in penalties from lawbreaking employers who would otherwise profit from exploiting workers. As this report details, in 2019, the state collected over $88 million in PAGA penalties.Through new data supplied by California’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), as well as assessments of practitioners, this brief explores PAGA’s impact on California’s workforce. While some employer-backed lobby groups have articulated strong concerns about PAGA, we find no evidence of a negative effect on the economy or a flood of frivolous litigation. Instead, PAGA has boosted the economy by helping California workers, especially those workers most vulnerable to workplace exploitation, fight wage theft. PAGA has demonstrably enhanced Labor Code compliance among employers, built enforcement capacity among state agencies, and ensured that violations of the law have a meaningful remed
Recommended from our members
Hollow Victories: The Crisis in Collecting Unpaid Wages for California's Workers
This report exposes a surprising, but unfortunately common problem facing low-wage workers in California and nationwide. Workers whose employers have failed to pay them face serious challenges in recovering their hard-earned wages — even after state authorities have found in the workers’ favor and have issued a legally binding judgment ordering employers to pay. To a worker who has lost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, winning a judgment is often at best a hollow victory. Non-payment or underpayment of wages, moreover, remains rampant nationwide. As a landmark survey of low-wage workers found in 2008, 26 percent of low-wage workers were paid less than the minimum wage in the prior week; 76 percent of those who worked more than 40 hours were not paid the legally required overtime rate. More than two-thirds of low-wage workers have experienced at least one payrelated violation in the previous work week—leading workers to lose an average of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations
Recommended from our members
Hollow Victories: The Crisis in Collecting Unpaid Wages for California's Workers
This report exposes a surprising, but unfortunately common problem facing low-wage workers in California and nationwide. Workers whose employers have failed to pay them face serious challenges in recovering their hard-earned wages — even after state authorities have found in the workers’ favor and have issued a legally binding judgment ordering employers to pay. To a worker who has lost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, winning a judgment is often at best a hollow victory. Non-payment or underpayment of wages, moreover, remains rampant nationwide. As a landmark survey of low-wage workers found in 2008, 26 percent of low-wage workers were paid less than the minimum wage in the prior week; 76 percent of those who worked more than 40 hours were not paid the legally required overtime rate. More than two-thirds of low-wage workers have experienced at least one payrelated violation in the previous work week—leading workers to lose an average of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations
Recommended from our members
Worker Ownership, COVID-19, and the Future of the Gig Economy
Based on a summer 2020 survey with 302 workers for app-based gig companies in California, this report presents the impact of COVID-19 on those workers and their reactions to new models of worker ownership in the gig economy. We also draw from in-depth interviews with 15 workers and 9 experts on labor issues and worker-owned and labor contracting cooperative models, along with an extensive literature review.The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the precarity of gig work, exacerbating its well-documented exploitative conditions, including wage theft and routine violations of laws designed to protect workers’ health and safety. These conditions are enabled in app-based gig work by the lack of control, transparency, and stability experienced by this workforce. Misclassified gig workers—without access to paid sick leave, Unemployment Insurance, workers’ compensation, company-provided personal protective equipment (PPE), or income predictability—face a heightened risk of COVID-19 infection, food insecurity, and homelessness.The report is presented in three parts: (1) findings from survey responses regarding working conditions during COVID-19, (2) feedback from gig workers on a cooperative contracting model for the sector, and (3) case studies of cooperative and contracting models from other sectors
Recommended from our members
Worker Ownership, COVID-19, and the Future of the Gig Economy
Based on a summer 2020 survey with 302 workers for app-based gig companies in California, this report presents the impact of COVID-19 on those workers and their reactions to new models of worker ownership in the gig economy. We also draw from in-depth interviews with 15 workers and 9 experts on labor issues and worker-owned and labor contracting cooperative models, along with an extensive literature review.The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the precarity of gig work, exacerbating its well-documented exploitative conditions, including wage theft and routine violations of laws designed to protect workers’ health and safety. These conditions are enabled in app-based gig work by the lack of control, transparency, and stability experienced by this workforce. Misclassified gig workers—without access to paid sick leave, Unemployment Insurance, workers’ compensation, company-provided personal protective equipment (PPE), or income predictability—face a heightened risk of COVID-19 infection, food insecurity, and homelessness.The report is presented in three parts: (1) findings from survey responses regarding working conditions during COVID-19, (2) feedback from gig workers on a cooperative contracting model for the sector, and (3) case studies of cooperative and contracting models from other sectors