Minimum Wage Rises, So Ds Wage eft

The garment industry is notorious for rampant wage theft, contributing to L.A.s recognition as wage theft capital of the world. Silvia Rivera, garment worker and member of Koreatown Immigrant Worker Alliance (KIWA), an organization that advocates for workers rights. Photo courtesy of UCLA Labor Center.

Months passed and Hilda Lopez and her coworkers still hadn't received all of their back pay. As a garment worker, Lopez was paid the minimum wage to sew jeans and t-shirts for pricey name brands her company contracted with, but after two months of not receiving any pay and promises of being paid next week , Lopez and her coworkers filed a complaint with the California Labor Commissioners Office.

One day we showed up to work and everything was gone. They had locked the doors and we looked inside and they took the all equipment too. We never got paid, said Lopez. During the months-long wage-theft investigation, the owner of the company filed for bankruptcy and Lopez and her coworkers lost all chance of receiving their pay.

After her experience, Lopez started organizing around wage-theft and workers' rights, eventually leading her to get involved in the movement to raise the minimum wage. She was one of hundreds of workers that packed into city hall last June, the day the Los Angeles city council voted to raise the minimum wage to $15. Lopez and other advocates saw it as a victory for workers, but one hurdle remained: making sure it would be enforced.

We've gotten the increase, but we need to make sure it's enforced because what's the point of raising the minimum wage if the people arent even get the wages they're already working for? said Scarlett De Leon, a political organizer with the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance.

The increase in the minimum wage brings a decline in worker turnover, saving money in terms of the hiring and training process. It improves productivity which absorbs part of the costs.Ken Jacobs, Chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

The City's move to raise the minimum wage is part of a larger trend in cities and counties to take the issue of poverty into their own hands. Seattle, San Francisco and Pittsburgh have all passed similar ordinances. Following the City's move, Los Angeles County, Long Beach and Santa Monica have also voted to raise their minimum wage to $15.

On January 1, the state's minimum wage increased from $9 to $10, as part of legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013. The City and county will see an additional increase of 50 cents July 1, the first step in a gradual increase to get the city and county minimum wage to $15 by 2020 and 2021 for businesses with fewer than 25 employees.

To ensure the higher wages get paid, the county is forming a Wage Enforcement Program, a unit of the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. The program will serve the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles county and will deal with investigations, education, outreach, negotiations and settlement.

We want to make sure that minimum wage workers know their rights under the ordinance and that employers know what their responsibilities are, said Brian Stiger, director of the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs.

The program will begin June 1, but representatives of the Wage Enforcement Program have already begun contacting local businesses to notify them of the increase.

We are expecting complaints to come in shortly after the program begins, but come July 1st, we will be ready to investigate complaints of violations, said Stiger.

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The Wage Enforcement Program is estimated to cost $800,000, but Stiger said that number may go up as the program is rolled out. The program currently has five employees, four of which are field investigators and they have already requested an additional six employees.

According to a report by the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, low-wage workers in Los Angeles lose more than $26.2 million in wage-theft violations each week. Some of the common violations include violating minimum wage laws, not paying workers overtime and forcing workers to work off the clock.

Advocates say wage-theft complaints previously filed with the California Labor Commissioners Office took too long to be investigated and left workers waiting months to receive their back pay, if they were ever received at all. Stiger said that is a problem they aim to address with the county Wage Enforcement Program.

We want to make sure that if we have information of a violation of the ordinance, we can move as quickly as we can. We have been investigating consumer complaints and we realize that these investigations have to be concluded very quickly, said Stiger.

Some incorporated cities have requested to contract with the county's Wage Enforcement Program. Stiger said they are in the very early stages of discussion.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who proposed the county increase, said she hopes that increasing the minimum wage in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles - which makes up for 10 percent of the county's workforce - will push the other 87 incorporated cities towards an increase.

Various unincorporated areas border different cities and it's possible that workers would opt to work in the unincorporated areas rather than the cities. We hope that would encourage cities to raise their minimum wage as well, said Kuehl.

The raise of Californias minimum wage could help low wage workers stay above the poverty line. Photo:longislandwins/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Lopez said that although the state's recent increase to $10 is small, it has managed to make her life easier.

I feel more free to buy my basic needs without as many worries. It helps relieve some stress because making $9 an hour is hard. Every cent you make you have to think hard and make h

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