Senator Wiener Announces Plan To Pause Wage Theft Bill and Work to Pass It in January

SACRAMENTO – Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced that Senate Bill 310, a bill allowing workers — typically low-wage workers — to swiftly recover full penalties for late or stolen wages, will be paused until next January for further work. Senator Wiener released the following statement:

“Low-wage workers currently have no viable way under California law to recover penalties for late or stolen wages. As a result, employers have little incentive to pay workers on time. For far too many workers, a late paycheck means foregoing basic needs, such as food or an asthmatic child’s inhaler.

“SB 310 is a commonsense measure that simply allows workers to recover both their back wages and statutory penalties for late or stolen wages. Opponents of the bill — in particular, the California Chamber of Commerce — engaged in what can only be described as a misinformation campaign against the bill, falsely claiming it somehow ran afoul of the negotiated changes last year to the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). That claim is baseless — Labor Code violations and enforcement exist separate from PAGA — but the scale and endless repetition of this misinformation undermined the bill’s passage.

“All workers in California should be protected from wage theft, and our coalition will continue to work to ensure that workers can recover stolen or delayed wages and be made whole. Over the coming months, I will work with Senate Judiciary Chair Tom Umberg to refine SB 310 with the goal of passing it through the Senate in January. I appreciate Chair Umberg’s engagement.”

“We’re grateful that Senator Wiener is continuing to press forward with this legislation, which has been prompted by years-long delays in processing wage theft cases by local Labor Commissioner offices,” said Mark Schacht, Deputy Director of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, co-sponsor of SB 310. “Low wage workers deserve a meaningful avenue to remedy employer wage theft, and this bill simply gives them the same relief in a court proceeding that they could obtain if they prevailed in an LCO hearing. It creates no new liability for employers who stiff workers on their wages, but it does ensure that this liability might be timely and effectively enforced in future cases. I’m sure that’s why some employers oppose it.”

“SB 310 is about creating real remedies for low-wage workers who already live paycheck to paycheck, and cannot afford to be paid late,” said Alexx Campbell, Senior Staff Attorney at Legal Aid at Work, a co-sponsor of SB 310. “I’m disappointed that the opponents of SB 310 used politics around PAGA to mislead and to draw attention away from the true purpose of the bill, which is to give struggling workers a more effective way to seek restitution when they suffer the harmful effects of wage theft. Right now, many of California’s legal systems that were designed to protect workers and their rights are not functioning like they should.  As a state, we need to do more so that when workers experience wage theft and the cascading harms that result, they can turn to speedy and effective remedies to make them whole.” 

###