Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP

California Wage Theft News, November 2024: • A California city adds a labor ordinance for developers to pay back wages before receiving permits,  • The California Department of Labor is struggling to find workers for which it has received settlements, and • There is a backlog at state agencies handling wage theft claims.

As of October 2024, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) is implementing a policy that it can no longer investigate wage theft claims from workers earning more than $53,000 per year (approximately $25.34 per hour). BOLI cited resource constraints and increasing workloads as key reasons for establishing this threshold. This policy change means workers earning above the $53K threshold may have to pursue claims through private lawsuits rather than through BOLI.

CPSC labels Amazon a distributor who must handle recalls of products, while a second court finds Amazon drivers are employees not independent contractors for driver accident liability.

The California Department of Insurance (CDI) released a new report in June of 2024, reviewing seven extreme heat events from 2013 to 2022 to estimate economic costs and health impacts. As extreme heating events increase in frequency, workers and employers need to consider the best ways to protect themselves. Heat stroke, heat exhaustion, syncope, kidney failure and rhabdomyolysis are all possible when a worker is exposed to excessive heat.

In California, worker’s compensation is generally the exclusive remedy for employees who are injured on the job, meaning they usually cannot sue their employers in a civil trial for workplace injuries. However, there are exceptions to the rule, which allow for injured workers to take their case to court.

A new report released by Harvard and the University of California San Francisco, titled “Compliance and the Complaint Gap: Labor Standards Violations in the California Service Sector” examined compliance with labor standards among hourly service sector workers in California. 2 out of 5 workers reported violations where they were required to work off the clock, did not receive overtime pay, did not receive full pay, were paid less than the minimum wage, were not paid all required PTO, or they did not receive all bonuses or tips.

The FTC announced an investigation into the practice of surveillance pricing, listing concerns about how companies are using personal data to set individualized prices for consumers. Surveillance pricing has been making the news as companies move to take old systems, such as paper printed prices on store shelves, and experiment with new systems such as digital price tags.

On January 9th, 2023, Denver passed the Civil Wage Theft Ordinance. The law has been in effect for over one year, and the city and county of Denver recently released a summary of the results so far. The law makes gives Denver one of the strongest in the U.S., similar in structure to the Private Attorney General Act in California for wage theft. Denver recovered over $2,000,000 in wages for 3,570 workers, through the Denver Labor department. The law also empowers employees to hire attorneys as the law allows for a private right of action. The current minimum wage in Denver as of 2024 is $18.29 per hour, with overtime due after 40 hours per week (federal law) or 12 hours per day (Colorado law).

On April 25th, 2024, the Federal Register published a new final rule from the Employee Benefits Security Administration, within the Department of Labor, regarding when a person is a fiduciary within the scope of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). ERISA imposes special duties to those who are “fiduciaries”, people who provide advice on investment in exchange, including those who do so for compensation. The new ERISA rule eliminates some exemptions for those providing advice on a limited or one-time basis.

On March 25, 2024, the Supreme Court for the state of California ruled that time spend in security checks on the premises of employers must be paid to hourly workers. Security check time is one of the more common ways in which employers have workers work off the clock, along with other common examples such as working during a break or lunch, or having to put on or off security equipment before clocking in.