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Ensuring a Fair Day’s Pay

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Cullen
Jul 28, 2016

As employees join the “Fight for 15” and attempt to raise the minimum wage, many workers across the country are fighting just to collect last week’s paycheck. Now, following the example of other cities, counties, and states, Philadelphia ischanging the way it operates to make it easier for employees to collect the money they have earned and to deter employers from engaging in a practice known as wage theft.

Wage theft occurs when an employer does not pay an employee correctly. It takes many forms: failure to pay employees for hours they have worked, payment that is less than the minimum wage, failure to pay employees their proper overtime rate, and more. A recent report from Temple University’s Sheller Center for Social Justice estimates that in any given workweek, Pennsylvania employees lose between $19 and $32 million dollars due to wage theft. In the Philadelphia area alone, tens of thousands of wage theft cases occur every week. To address this reality, the Philadelphia City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that will increase the city’s capacity to enforce the state and federal wage laws that are designed to protect employees from wage theft.

The ordinance makes two important changes to Philadelphia’s current regulatory scheme. First, the ordinance creates a Wage Theft Coordinator position within the city government. The Coordinator will receive, review, and adjudicate new wage theft complaints. While adjudicating, the Coordinator will examine the evidence-which could include records of hours worked and rates of pay-and determine if an employer has violated any wage laws. If the employer is found guilty and refuses to comply with the judgment, the Coordinator will have the authority to take further action by filing a complaint in court.

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D.C. Commits to $15 Minimum Wage by 2020

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

July 13, 2016

by KIM SZARMACH

Mayor Muriel Bowser signed legislation on June 27 that had been unanimously approved by D.C. Council to raise D.C.’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020. The minimum wage was increased to $11.50 on July 1 in accordance with a 2013 D.C. amendment, but the wage will rise faster from year to year because of the new Fair Shot Minimum Wage Amendment Act of 2016.

The legislation also increases base-pay for tipped workers, though many advocates have argued in favor of one minimum wage for all. “We believe that D.C. should follow the model of more and more jurisdictions around the country,” testified DC Fiscal Policy Institute Senior Analyst Ilana Boivie at a May hearing about the bill, “to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers altogether, to address the severe income stability and other challenges these workers face.” District employers are responsible for making up the difference if their employees’ tips do not add up to at least minimum wage.

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Oregon Issues Rules In Advance Of New Minimum Wage Law

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

by Chris Lehman
June 15, 2016 5:56 p.m.
Updated: June 15, 2016 7 p.m.

Oregon employers have new guidance from the state on how much to pay their employees when the state’s minimum wage goes up next month. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries released rules Wednesday meant to clear up one of the questions surrounding the legislatively-approved minimum wage hike.

The state’s minimum wage goes up July 1, but the amount of the increase depends on where you work. The wage goes up 25 cents per hour in rural counties and 50 cents per hour everywhere else. Next year, the state moves to a three-tiered system which gives workers in the Portland metro area a higher rate than the rest of the state.

But what about workers whose job sometimes takes them across the boundaries of the state’s three-tiered minimum wage map? Employers are worried they’d have to keep meticulous track of how much time any given worker spent in any given place.

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Miami Beach commission approves minimum wage raise

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

JUNE 8, 2016

MIAMI BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) – The Miami Beach City commission unanimously approved an ordinance establishing a city-wide minimum living wage increase.

The ordinance, which was first proposed by Mayor Philip Levine and co-sponsored by all six city commissioners, will take effect January 1, 2018, and gradually increase over four years until 2021. The minimum living wage will be first set at $10.31 and will increase over four years to $13.31.

The new minimum wage will apply to all workers employed in the City of Miami Beach and those covered by the federal minimum wage.

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Minimum Wage Hike Approved by San Diego Voters

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

The proposition not only raises the minimum wage to $10.50 but also gives workers five days of paid sick leave.

By Liberty Zabala
Published at 7:43 AM PDT on Jun 8, 2016

 

San Diego voters made their support for a minimum wage increase very clear when they went to the ballot box Tuesday.

Proposition I was approved by 63 percent of voters, clearing the way for an immediate increase to the city’s minimum wage.

The proposition not only raises the minimum wage to $10.50 but also gives workers five days of paid sick leave.

In January, the minimum wage will be boosted to $11.50 an hour.

The state also approved a similar hike to $15 an hour minimum wage.

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City Hall Tells How It Proposes to Enforce Pasadena’s New Minimum Wage (CA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

City Hall’s monitoring, enforcement plan calls for hiring a compliance officer, new duties for multiple city departments and a $204,000 budget

by EDDIE RIVERA, Community Editor
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 | 4:56 AM

Following Pasadena’s passage in March of a new ordinance which will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour by 2020, both business owners and people who work in Pasadena were left with two major questions – how will this raise actually be implemented and monitored, and how will the new law be enforced?

City Hall’s Minimum Wage Internal Working Group has a plan. The detailed proposal was made public last Thursday in an informational report.

The Group is recommending that the overall program be administered by a code compliance manager working within the department of Planning and Community Development. The initial outreach of the ordinance to media, residents and businesses, will be managed by the Council’s Economic Development Committee, and the City’s public information officer. Staff training in the legal requirements of the ordinance will be handled by the City Attorney’s office.

Consumer outreach and education will be managed by the consumer action teams of the Recreation and Human Services Department, who will also manage intake and complaints regarding wage enforcement and refer them to the Code Compliance manager. Egregious cases may also be referred to the Prosecutor’s Office, working with the Police Department.

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(Mayor) Cranley proposes minimum wage boost for city employees to $15 per hour

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Sen. Sherrod Brown joins mayor for announcement

BY: Kristen Swilley, Austin Fast
POSTED: 11:53 AM, Mar 29, 2016
UPDATED: 5:54 PM, Mar 29, 2016

CINCINNATI — Full-time city employees could soon be earning a minimum wage of $15 per hour, among other labor reforms aimed at strengthening the middle class that were announced Tuesday morning by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Mayor John Cranley

…

The reform package announced Tuesday includes three components:

  • Raising Cincinnati’s living wage from $12.58 to $15 per hour for its full-time (at least 30 hours per week) employees and from $8.25 to $10.10 per hour for its part-time and seasonal workers. Going forward, these increase wage rates are indexed to the Consumer Price Index and will be adjusted annually;
  • Creating a city prevailing wage law that dramatically expands the types and number of government subsidies that trigger prevailing wage requirements. If triggered, the city’s prevailing wage requirements would apply when the state’s requirements are not triggered.
  • Implementing crane safety measures (following a crane accident at The Banks in February) to ensure all crane operators in the city are qualified and all crane operators are appropriately insured.

 

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Increasing enforcement at state and local levels in Massachusetts combats wage theft

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By CHRIS LINDAHL
Monday, February 15, 2016

NORTHAMPTON – Efforts are underway on the state and local levels in communities across Massachusetts to combat wage theft, the practice of employers denying workers the pay to which they are legally entitled.

Labor activists say wage theft is an unfortunate practice in workplaces throughout the country. It’s not uncommon for bosses to deny workers earned overtime, sick time or even the minimum wage, they say. The practice is particularly prevalent in the restaurant industry, which employs about 40 percent of all workers making at or below the minimum wage nationwide. It’s also common in the landscaping and construction industries, studies have found.

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No, raising the local minimum wage doesn’t hurt local businesses

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Jared Bernstein and Ben Spielberg
February 26

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the nation’s first minimum-wage law. It set the wage at $0.25 an hour and covered only a fifth of the workforce. Speaking to the country the night before he signed the bill, Roosevelt told listeners to “not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day” tell them “that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”

Last August, almost 80 years later, the city council of Birmingham, Ala., voted 7 to 0 (with one abstention) to become the first city in the Deep South to enact a minimum wage above today’s federal level of $7.25. The ordinance planned an increase to $8.50 per hour by July 2016, with a second increase to $10.10 set for July 2017.

In response, state lawmakers leapt from “calamity-howling” to obstructionism. The Alabama legislature this past week passed a bill designed to block Birmingham and other cities not just from raising the local wage floor but also from mandating benefits such as paid sick leave. Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard (R) insists that the bill isn’t about the policies themselves but about preventing “all sorts of problems” that arise when cities are allowed to set their own minimum wages, presumably because there’s nothing preventing local businesses from relocating to avoid the higher labor costs engendered by an increase.

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Seattle Minimum Wage and Wage Theft Ordinances Take Effect April 1, 2015

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

4/1/2015 by Portia Moore, Paula Simon

 

 

Two significant wage-related ordinances take effect on April 1, 2015, impacting all employers with employees who work in Seattle, whether regularly or occasionally.

The Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance: Minimum wages rise for all employees who perform at least two hours of work in Seattle in a two-week pay period. The Ordinance sets forth additional record-keeping and notice posting requirements, along with provisions on joint employers and integrated enterprises. The city’s new Office of Labor Standards (OLS), which is part of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (SOCR), has just released the final administrative rules that guide how the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance is interpreted and enforced, available here, along with an extensive FAQ sheet, available here.

The Seattle Wage Theft Ordinance: Although the City of Seattle originally passed a Wage Theft Ordinance in 2011 (amending SMC 12A.08.060), the sole complaint mechanism provided by the 2011 law involved the filing of a criminal complaint to law enforcement. Starting Wednesday, April 1, 2015, a new administrative process will allow employees to file wage theft charges with the OLS.