California lawmakers need to examine wage theft. However labor unions are pushing again

On this, labor unions and lawmakers agree: Wage theft is rampant in California, and the state system set as much as assist robbed employees is damaged.

However a Bay Space lawmaker’s name for an unbiased state investigation into what’s gone improper has introduced opposition from, of all locations, California’s highly effective labor unions. The unions try to dam the motion when lawmakers from the Senate and Meeting meet Wednesday to think about audit requests.

State Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), who proposed the investigation in January, stated he’s surprised.

“It’s ironic to have the unions opposing a second set of eyes on this significant issue,” Glazer stated by telephone.

Glazer’s workplace stated state officers informed them employees with wage theft claims at the moment should wait greater than two years — 780 days — for a listening to earlier than the Division of Industrial Relations, the state’s labor company.

State regulation requires hearings to be held inside 120 days.

The backlog, in addition to the labor division’s wrestle to fill job vacancies within the wage theft unit, have lengthy been the topic of legislative hearings and administrative guarantees of motion.

It’s time, Glazer stated, “to get an unvarnished image.”

“Generally,” Glazer stated, “the issue recognized will not be one the administration needs to come clean with. … It is probably not so simple as extra money and hiring extra individuals.”

Union lobbyists initially stated they might take no stance on an investigation into wage theft, Glazer stated.

However the California Labor Federation is now pushing its personal agenda.

“We don’t must be diverted in the course of all this. We’ve already achieved the work to seek out out what’s improper,” stated Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, a former member of the state Meeting who’s now chief officer of the federation. “We’re making an attempt to get motion at present.”

Gonzalez Fletcher stated labor leaders in non-public have arrived at their very own conclusions of what must be achieved.

“We actually have convened the entire specialists, the attorneys, the employee facilities, the unions, and give you a complete host of enforcement instruments that we have to enact,” she stated.

The federation blitzed a two-page abstract of its plans Friday to all lawmakers. Its bullet-list of ideas features a streamlined hiring course of for wage theft investigators, relaxed hiring requirements and elevated pay. It additionally endorses laws that will permit state penalties in opposition to corporations that misclassify their employees as unbiased contractors to keep away from paying time beyond regulation and different advantages.

Bringing in investigators whose findings could be public would “impede” these adjustments, Gonzalez Fletcher asserted, diverting employees and sources.

The federation represents some 1,200 native unions with employees in retail, manufacturing, development, hospitality, healthcare and public authorities and healthcare, amongst different industries. Its opposition letter to the wage theft audit was signed by 11 different unions and union organizations, together with Teamsters, United Meals and Industrial Employees, and Worksafe.

The Division of Industrial Relations has not taken a stance on Glazer’s audit request. The company additionally didn’t reply to a request to interview Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower.

She was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019. For almost 20 years earlier than, Garcia-Brower constructed wage theft circumstances in opposition to janitorial corporations as director of the Los Angeles-based Upkeep Cooperation Belief Fund, which is financed by unionized janitorial companies.

The audit is to be voted on Wednesday by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, which is chaired by Assemblyman David Alvarez (D-San Diego), who cosigned Glazer’s request. Till union opposition surfaced, approval seemed to be assured.

Different objects on the agenda embrace a request by state Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) to analyze failures in California’s hashish licensing. The request got here in response to an investigative sequence by The Occasions documenting widespread native corruption and bribery, a market collapse forcing small-scale weed growers out of enterprise, unbridled unlawful cultivation overtaking rural communities, and the exploitation and deaths of hashish farmworkers.

Publicly accessible info on wage theft claims is scanty, and reporting by the labor company to lawmakers supplies no details about backlogs. The present wait time for hearings was revealed to Glazer’s employees throughout a personal assembly, and no written report was created.

The Division of Industrial Relations didn’t reply questions from The Occasions about wait occasions for hearings or whether or not quick staffing has triggered lengthy delays.

A Occasions expose of widespread exploitation of hashish employees documented circumstances wherein employees waited greater than a yr for an preliminary settlement convention, months extra for a listening to, and even months extra for a choice — all of the whereas uncovered to hostile employers.

State case information obtained by The Occasions confirmed there was no document of an company reply to an advocate’s requests to hurry up hearings for 2 brothers allegedly threatened with dying if they didn’t withdraw their circumstances in opposition to a state-licensed Yolo County hashish farm. In different circumstances there was no additional investigation when employees alleged employers waved weapons at them or engaged in patterns of exploiting undocumented employees.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee units the agenda for the California State Auditor’s workplace, whose investigations detailing state failings incessantly grow to be political fodder.

The Labor Federation stated it was collaborating with quite a few lawmakers to repair wage theft points within the Division of Industrial Relations, together with state Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), who chairs the Senate Labor Committee and in addition sits on the audit committee making Wednesday’s vote.

Employees members for Cortese disputed that and on Monday stated the senator “will not be engaged on a plan associated to DIR and wage theft claims.”

Cortese and Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger), in response to Occasions reporting of abusive practices in hashish, are sponsoring their very own city corridor assembly on hashish business workforce points on the finish of the month.