Nearly a third of the Labor Commissioner’s positions were vacant in May, officials told a state Senate budget committee. ‘Three strikes’Īssemblymember Ash Kalra, a San Jose Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s labor committee, said the Labor Commissioner does not have enough agents or other workers to process all of the wage claims made by California workers effectively. Many claims take three times longer than the legal minimum of 135 days to resolve, data provided by the Labor Commissioner’s office show. Last year alone California workers filed nearly 19,000 individual claims totaling more than $338 million in stolen wages. State officials and lawmakers say the Labor Commissioner’s office, the California agency overseeing wage and hour violations, has been too short-staffed to do its job, a problem that worsened during the pandemic and subsequent labor shortage. But in practice, enforcing those laws has not been easy. They also fixed their sights on wage theft in the garment industry, eliminating some longstanding pay practices that often resulted in workers being paid below the minimum wage.Įarlier this month, California Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower recovered $282,000 in stolen wages and penalties for 22 workers of a Long Beach car wash using a law enacted in January that empowers her office to place liens on the property of problematic worksites.Ĭalifornia’s laws targeting wage theft - which is the failure by bosses to pay workers what they are owed - make it a leader among states, national labor experts say. Just last year, legislators made certain instances of wage theft a felony. The state is a national leader in labor law, experts say, but its agency enforcing wage theft rules in California still struggles to staff up.įor decades California’s lawmakers and regulators have taken aim at employers who rob their workers of pay, overtime premiums, tips and other forms of compensation.
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