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Lt. Gov. Tina Smith has been shedding some light recently on wage theft in Minnesota. She has been urging the Legislature to pass legislation cracking down on wage theft this session. She took part in a Capitol rally in February and on Wednesday she joined legislators and Minnesota workers in a roundtable discussion.
According to Smith, wage theft occurs when employers do not pay workers what is owed to them for work performed. According to Smith, more than 39,000 Minnesota workers lose out on nearly $12 million in unpaid wages each year.
"Wage theft is stealing. It’s not how we do business in Minnesota," Smith said Tuesday.
She says Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposal would strengthen workers’ rights and crack down on non-abiding employers.
It proposes the following:
• Providing funding to enforce wage theft protections
• Defining the law by making it clear wage theft is wrong and illegal
• Give investigators the power to subpoena documents
• Require notice of information to be provided to employees at the start of employment, including rate of pay, the legal name of the employer and the employer’s address and phone number
• Creating stiffer penalties to prevent and crack down on wage theft
• Increasing the fines for willful and repeated violations of wage theft laws from $1,000 to $10,000 per violation
• Requiring employers pay employees every 16 days rather than every 31. Under current law, an employee could work 41 days without knowing whether they are going to be paid or not.
These proposals are sensible and would protect the most vulnerable workers. Let’s face it, the victims of wage theft are likely those workers who have the least resources to fight back.
Nationally, it’s estimated that wage theft is widespread and costs workers billions of dollars a year. This worsens income inequality. It hurts workers and their families.
While wage theft is clearly unfair and immoral, low-income workers are not getting needed protections under the Trump administration.
Last month Trump signed a bill repealing a regulation that encouraged federal contractors to follow labor laws. Under the Obama-era rule, companies with an egregious record of violating wage and safety laws would lose their government contracts if they didn’t come into compliance. Republicans in Congress charged that the rule was too punitive and unfair to business.
So you know what happens next. With less safeguards in place, some businesses will cheat and some of the most vulnerable workers and their families will suffer.