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Minnesota to open wage theft investigations unit (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Written By: Tess Williams
Jul 16th 2019 – 12pm

Gov. Tim Walz signed a new law that invested $3.1 million to the Department of Labor and Industry to enforce wage and hour laws. The new law is designed to protect workers from exploitative employers who do not pay them for their work. The legislation adds criminal penalties for employers.

In turn, the attorney general formed a Wage Theft Unit to enforce the new law and litigate the cases. A press release from Attorney General Keith Ellison said wage theft includes “having hours shaved off your paycheck; being forced to work off the clock; not getting paid for overtime; being paid at a lower rate than promised, sometimes even below minimum wage; being paid in cash or other forms like gift cards, with no Social Security, unemployment or worker’s comp withheld; being misclassified as an independent contractor and more.”

Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Moler and investigator Ana Vergara will staff the unit. Any Minnesotan who has experienced wage theft can contact the attorney general’s office at 651-296-3353 or attorney.general@ag.state.mn.us.

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Why Minneapolis passed a wage-theft ordinance that essentially duplicates state law (MN)

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By Jessica Lee | 08/08/2019

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed an ordinance that establishes the city’s own set of rules to crack down on wage theft and force employers to be transparent with payrolls. The ordinance is similar to a state law that went into effect last month.

On Thursday morning, the 13-member council rewrote city code to give attorneys within the city’s Department of Civil Rights authority to enforce the municipal law against wage theft – which is when employers don’t pay employees, or pay them less than guaranteed – and require employers to provide earnings statements on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, a larger-scale effort is beginning within the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and the attorney general’s office. Last month, Gov. Tim Walz signed a bipartisan bill to establish protections for workers that substantially grow the state’s resources for investigating allegations of wage theft – guidelines that are almost identical to the Minneapolis ordinance. Supporters call the new policies necessary considering the pervasiveness of underpayment that disproportionately affects Minnesota’s communities of color and immigrants.

But while labor and social-justice advocates celebrate the new efforts, which they describe as the toughest of their kind in the country, this question remains: Why is it necessary for Minneapolis to pass an ordinance that basically duplicates state law?

The state law

The state Labor Department estimates that up to 40,000 employees in Minnesota are not fully paid what they have earned each year. Examples of wage theft are when employees clock out but keep working, don’t receive sick and safe time or time and a half for overtime, or work more hours than promised at a flat rate.

That is what prompted the 2019 change to state law. The law set aside roughly $3 million over the next two years to establish a new investigative program and help pay the salaries of about 12 new hires, including investigators, communication personnel and researchers. In an interview last week, Labor Commissioner Nancy Leppink said the department is in the process of finalizing job descriptions. Once administrators establish the new team, she said the department will create new operating and training procedures.

Currently, Labor Department investigators mostly do “records-based” investigations by examining documentation such as employees’ pay stubs. But with the funding boost, investigators will be able to travel to employees’ workplaces to do in-person interviews and look around.

“[Onsite investigations] have greater capacity to detect various, certain kinds of wage theft, and also to detect things like labor trafficking, which you’re not going to see in … simply the review of paper records,” Leppink said. “It’s clear that we need to be getting into workplaces to find workers who may not even be on the books in terms of payroll records.”

She said the state welcomes Minneapolis’ efforts to create its own team of investigators and enforcement regulations, and staff within the city and Labor Department have been meeting regularly to coordinate strategies.

“The problem is significant, and so therefore additional resources to respond to these issues are always welcome and needed,” Leppink said. “Having more hands on deck can only make for improvements on this issue.”

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New Law Championed by Greenstein and DeAngelo Bans Worker Wage Theft (NJ)

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By TAPINTO HAMILTON/ROBBINSVILLE STAFF
August 7, 2019 at 4:32 PM

TRENTON, NJ — Workers will no longer need to worry about wage theft under a new law signed on Tuesday by Acting Governor Sheila Oliver to enhance enforcement of New Jersey’s wage and hour law. The measure holds employers accountable for unpaid wages, benefits, or overtime through increased damages and fines.

It also will make victims of wage theft eligible to receive both the wages owed and liquidated damages of 200 percent of wages owed.

“We must ensure that every hardworking individual in New Jersey receives the wages they worked hard to earn,” said Oliver. “I am proud to sign this legislation that will protect the rights of workers, furthering the Murphy-Oliver Administration’s commitment to build a stronger and fairer New Jersey through protecting the right to earn a fair wage.”

The law is sponsored by Hamilton and Robbinsville’s legislative representatives Senator Linda Greenstein and Assemblymembers Wayne DeAngelo. Assemblyman Dan Benson was a co-sponsor.

“The unscrupulous employers robbing the hard working people of New Jersey of their time and money need to face the consequences of their actions,” said Senator Linda Greenstein. “When wage theft is apparent, there must be effective laws in place to protect the workers of our state and to punish the employers. Wage theft is a serious crime and it is about time that our laws reflect this.”

“Above all else, this law is about workers’ rights,” said Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo. “Employers in New Jersey should be held to a high standard to treat their employees with the decency and legality they deserve. No one should be withheld one penny of the wages they are legally entitled to.”

“In signing this legislation, the Murphy Administration sends a clear message to workers that we have their backs and will protect them from being disciplined for reporting unpaid wages. And, it sends a clear message to the vast majority of businesses that we are aggressively pursuing their dishonest competitors with penalties for wage theft that are now stronger than ever,” said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo.

The new law takes effect immediately.

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Easthampton City Council to consider wage theft ordinance (NY)

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By MICHAEL CONNORS
Staff Writer
Published: 7/26/2019 3:12:28 PM

Easthampton – The city is exploring new rules that would require construction employers who are either hired by the city or receive municipal tax relief to abide by a set of conditions in an effort to discourage wage theft.

The proposed amendment to the city ordinances is set for a public hearing in front of the City Council on Aug. 7. It requires any bidder, proposer, contractor or subcontractor receiving public funds or tax relief to sign an affidavit stating they will abide by wage laws, attempt to meet certain diversity requirements and submit detailed records of employee work to the city.

City Councilor Owen Zaret said the proposal comes at a time when the city is planning to fund multiple construction projects. He said having rules on the books to protect construction workers from theft was an important step going forward.

“I think it’s important to make a statement through … municipal projects in Easthampton that (workers) are classified, covered and paid appropriately,” Zaret said. “It’s about fairness for workers and workers’ rights.”

Too often, he said, contractors classify laborers as independent contractors instead of employees – allowing them to not have to pay employer taxes on workers or provide employment insurance such as workers’ compensation. There can also be instances of workers not being paid for the amount of hours worked, he said.

Though Zaret said he was not personally aware of any such activity happening in Easthampton, he believes the city should follow the example of other cities like Springfield, which passed a similar ordinance in 2018.

Under the proposal, contractors hired for work by the city must prove, on a weekly basis, that they have not been debarred or found to be in violation of labor laws in the past five years, provide accident insurance, classify workers as employees, pay fair wages and give employment preference to Easthampton residents.

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How to Combat Wage Theft

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By Rebecca Koenig, Staff Writer
June 24, 2019, at 10:26 a.m.

AS LOW-INCOME WORKERS know, it’s tough to get by on modest wages. When those wages are stolen through illegal employment practices, it makes life even harder.

Unfortunately, wage theft is a problem low-income workers encounter pretty often. For example, among the roughly 110 people who pass through the doors of the Workers’ Rights Clinic each month in Washington, D.C., many come with valid claims of not having been paid properly, says Allen Cardenas, clinic coordinator.
Wage theft describes a variety of pay violations.

Examples of wage theft include:

  • Not being paid for all hours worked.
  • Not being paid overtime.
  • Not being paid at least the applicable minimum wage.
  • Not being paid at all.
  • Not taking home all earned tips.
  • Not being permitted to take earned breaks.
  • Having pay deducted illegally.
  • Being required to work “off the clock.”

Employers are responsible for following labor laws, but they don’t always comply. Follow these steps to help prevent wage theft and to take action if it occurs to you.

Know your rights.

The first step of combating wage theft is understanding the rights to which you’re entitled as a worker under federal, state and local laws. These include minimum wages, overtime pay, work breaks, reasonable medical and religious accommodations and protections from retaliation, safety hazards and discrimination.

Don’t assume wage theft is accidental.

While a company may occasionally make a bookkeeping error that results in your paycheck being smaller than it should be, most wage theft is not accidental, according to Daniel A. Katz, senior counsel at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, which hosts the Workers’ Rights Clinic.

“The vast majority of these claims are clearly intentional violations,” he says.

Wage theft is more common in some settings and occupations than others, according to research published by the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers. It happens relatively frequently in textile factories, private households, restaurants, retail stores and warehouses and to people who work in child care, personal services, building services, hospitality and food preparation.

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Exposing Wage Theft Without Fear: States Must Protect Workers from Retaliation

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NELP
June 24, 2019

Around the country, workers who speak up about workplace violations often face a significant risk of retaliation by their employer. Yet our laws generally place the burden on workers to come forward and report violations, either through complaints filed with enforcement agencies or through lawsuits filed in state or federal court. Government investigations or audits of employers are relatively rare. Retaliation is therefore one of the most pressing and persistent challenges to effective enforcement of our workplace laws-workers should not fear that their employer will punish them for asserting their rights. Ultimately, any law intending to protect workers’ rights must protect workers from retaliation in order to make that law a reality.

Why Do Workers Experience Retaliation?

  • Workers in the U.S. generally bear the burden of enforcing their own labor protections-it is up to them to come forward to report violations.
  • When a worker comes forward to report a workplace violation, we know that employers often retaliate or threaten to retaliate against the worker.
  • ·Under our current system, workers bear the entire risk of retaliation from their employer when they report violations.

What Does Retaliation Look Like?

  • Retaliation takes many shapes and can be difficult to pinpoint or prove. Employers, for example, may fire a worker, demote a worker, reduce a worker’s hours, change worker’s schedule to a less favorable one, subject a worker to new forms of harassment, unfairly discipline a worker, threaten to report a worker or a worker’s family member to immigration authorities, and much more.

What Does Retaliation Cost Workers?

  • When workers experience retaliation for trying to protect their rights, the costs can quickly escalate from both a financial and emotional standpoint, especially for the countless workers nationwide who live paycheck to paycheck. A worker may experience lost pay, for example, which can quickly lead to missed payments, lower credit scores, eviction, repossession of a car or other property, suspension of a license, inability to pay child support or taxes, attorney’s fees and costs, stress, trauma, and more.
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More states should follow new Colorado policy on wage theft (CO)

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BY TERRI GERSTEIN
05/30/19 04:00 PM EDT

Something important for workplace justice quietly happened in Colorado this month, unheralded amidst the roar of our national politics. Governor Jared Polis signed a bill strengthening the penalties for employers who commit wage theft. In Minnesota, even stronger legislation was sent to Governor Tim Walz this week. Now other states should follow their lead.

Why does this matter? Because workers are cheated of pay every day. The incidence of workplace abuse is high. When people do not get paid, it has a huge impact on their lives, as we saw in the federal shutdown. Our laws too often treat employer crimes with a light touch, levying only minimal penalties amounting to little more than a slap on the wrist. The new law in Colorado appropriately treats wage theft with the seriousness it deserves.

Worker advocates started using the term “wage theft” awhile ago. The phrase began to take hold more broadly after activist Kim Bobo wrote a 2011 book by that name. Since then, “wage theft” entered the vernacular and eventually legal terminology, as worker exploitation and economic inequality have become high profile national issues. Of course, “wage theft” sounds more visceral and less wonky than “nonpayment of wages” or “violations of wage law,” but this term is not just better marketing or political framing, it is a more accurate description of what happens. I work 60 hours a week. You do not pay me or pay only a portion of what you owe or a fraction of what is required by law. You stole my work. That is theft.

It took awhile for people to wrap their minds around this, as we tend to think of theft as taking something that someone owns, something that you could actually touch and seek to recover, such as cars, cash, wallets, laptops, or other valuable objects. But work by people is also valuable. The legislation in Colorado perfectly demonstrates this conceptual leap. Seeking to combat both wage theft and human trafficking, the law notes the need “to recognize labor as a thing of value that can be subject to theft” and states that “to protect all workers, it is necessary to close loopholes that allow for the exploitation of human labor for profit.”

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Minneapolis City Council proposes crackdown on wage theft to parallel state law (MN)

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The proposal would require employers to put all pay agreements in writing and provide regular written or electronic earnings statements for transparency

By Andy Mannix Star Tribune
JUNE 21, 2019 – 10:07PM

Minneapolis City Council members want to give workers more power to hold their bosses accountable for unpaid wages, following the state’s lead in improving policing of wage theft.

Before a chamber full of workers, some wearing fluorescent orange and yellow vests emblazoned with union logos, Council Members Linea Palmisano, Steve Fletcher and Phillipe Cunningham introduced a proposal Friday that would require employers to put all pay agreements in writing and provide regular written or electronic earnings statements to workers for transparency. A complementary ordinance would expand these protections to freelance workers, such as independent contractors or Uber and Lyft drivers, Fletcher said.

“No matter how people earn their income in the city of Minneapolis, we want to make sure they are paid what they’ve earned,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher praised the lawmakers and organizers who helped push the state law. “Now what we want to do is join the team,” he said.

In Minneapolis, low-wage workers of color are particularly affected by this practice, according to the ordinance authors.

Veronica Mendez Moore, co-director of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha, said her organization has been working on the issue of wage theft for more than a decade.

The new rules would provide additional protections from retaliatory employers and create a streamlined system that allows workers to recoup wages without an attorney. Those who don’t follow the rules could face a misdemeanor charge and an escalating series of fines.

The ordinance is still in draft form, but authors say the law would likely apply to any employees who spend 80 hours per year working in Minneapolis.

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Minnesota Wage Theft Bill with New Employer Requirements Takes Effect July 1 (MN)

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JD Supra
June 12, 2019

In one of the most significant pieces of legislation affecting employers in many years, the Minnesota Legislature passed, and Governor Walz signed, the Jobs and Economic Development Omnibus bill that includes new wage theft protections for employees and new requirements for employers. The wage theft bill is one of the few pieces of bipartisan employment legislation that survived the 2019 legislative session. The law constitutes a very significant change in wage payment requirements and enforcement. It includes increased civil enforcement and recordkeeping requirements for employers, as well as new criminal penalties for intentional wage theft. These changes will go into effect on July 1, 2019.

What is Wage Theft?

The Omnibus bill includes two separate areas of enforcement. The first area concerns civil enforcement of wage payments. It increases the penalties for failure to pay wages and creates certain notice and recordkeeping requirements. The second area concerns criminal penalties for intentional wage theft. While both areas are referred to colloquially as wage theft, the statutory definition of wage theft applies only to intentional wage theft under the criminal statute. The law, however, increases potential exposure for employers that do not pay employees properly.

Civil Enforcement

The bill allocates over $2 million annually to civil enforcement of wage theft issues through the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and the Attorney General’s Office. It provides greater enforcement mechanisms including the authority to inspect places of employment “without unreasonable delay” and gives the Commissioner of Labor the ability to obtain an inspection order from the court if the employer refuses. It also makes it a misdemeanor to hinder or delay the Commissioner in the performance of his duties.

The new law gives the Commissioner the right to interview non-management employees in private regarding matters under investigation. It also increases the penalty for repeat failures to provide the records required by the Department of Labor to $5,000 per repeated failure. The law gives the Department the ability to share data with other public agencies, including licensing agencies. The data sharing will likely have implications for government contractors that run afoul of these new requirements. Finally, the law includes a retaliation prohibition, which includes a private right to bring a lawsuit, as well as a civil penalty in an amount between $700 and $3,000 per violation.

Timing of Payment of Wages

The law amends Minnesota Statute § 181.101 regarding the timing of wage payments. The statute now explicitly includes salary, earnings, and gratuities within the types of wages that must be paid at least once every 31 days. The law also states that all commission earned by an employee must be paid at least once every three months. The law removes the 15-day cap on penalties for late payment of wages. The law now explicitly includes commissions in the types of wages that may be demanded for payment; if the commission is not paid within 10 days of a demand for payment, the Department may charge and collect the commission earned along with a penalty equal to 1/15 of the commissions earned but unpaid for each day beyond the 10-day limit.

Notice and Recordkeeping Requirements

The law requires that employers include additional information in the earning statements provided to employees at the end of each pay period. In addition to the information previously required under Minnesota Statute § 181.032, employers must now also include 1) the rate or rates of pay including the basis of that rate, i.e., whether the employee is paid hourly, by shift, day, week, salary, piece, commission, or other method; 2) allowances claimed pursuant to permitted meals and lodging; 3) the physical address of the employer’s main office or principal place of business including a mailing address if different; and 4) the employer’s telephone number.

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New Jersey Workers, Advocates Celebrate Passage of Landmark Anti-Wage Theft Legislation (NJ)

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New Jersey Workers, Advocates Celebrate Passage of Landmark
Anti-Wage Theft Legislation

A2903/S1790 Catapults New Jersey to One of the Strongest Wage and Hour laws in the Country in Advance of the July 1st Minimum Wage Hike

INSIDER NJ
June 27, 2019, 4:15 pm

(Trenton, NJ) June 27, 2019: Today, both houses of the New Jersey State legislature passed a landmark anti-wage theft bill (A-2903 / S-1790), sending the legislation to Governor Phil Murphy’s desk. When signed into law, New Jersey’s wage and hour protections will be among the strongest in the country, just in time for the state’s minimum wage hike this July 1st.

The legislation enhances enforcement of state wage and hour laws, ensuring that workers are paid according to the law. Under the legislation, employers that violate wage and hour laws by not paying minimum wage, overtime or failing to pay for hours worked could liable for treble damages and fines. The bill also extends the statute of limitations from two to six years, strengthens joint employer liability where firms use subcontractors, and strengthens anti-retaliation provisions to protect employees who speak out against wage and hour violations.

“For low wage workers, like myself, passing the anti-wage theft bill has been just as important as increasing the minimum wage, because it means workers will actually receive the pay we have rightfully earned. Unscrupulous employers will no longer be rewarded by our laws for not paying workers. On behalf of Make the Road New Jersey, I would like to express our gratitude to Assemblywoman Quijano and Senator Weinberg for their years of commitment to ensuring the anti-wage theft bill becomes law” said Roberto Sanchez, a member of Make the Road New Jersey, a community-based immigrant and workers rights organization based in Elizabeth and Passaic.

“After years of advocacy, we are thrilled that New Jersey will have one of the strongest anti-wage theft law in the nation to protect workers against wage theft while creating a level playing field for employers that do right by their workers,” said Reynalda Cruz, a leader of New Labor, a workers’ center in based in Newark, New Brunswick, and Lakewood.

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