About five years ago, Subway, Little Caesars and McDonald’s top franchised restaurants in Minneapolis failed to meet the city’s wage standards. Now, staff at sites that broke the law get the required minimum wage and time off when they are sick.
All through a co-compliance program, in which the city’s hardwork compliance firm works with network organizations to make sure certain staff are aware of their rights and have the equipment to protect themselves. Last year, it reached more than 12,000 employees and provided staff education. ‘ rights to more than 400 people. Since the program began in 2018, it has recovered more than $3 million in unpaid wages.
“Quite regularly, since we started, we win a disproportionate number of court cases or reports of infractions from restaurant staff,” said Brian Walsh, director of hard work criteria and contract enforcement at the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, noting that the eatery industry has traditionally had most of its staff at or slightly above minimum wage. It’s kind of a frontline where some of those municipal labor criteria are rubber and they hit the road, so to speak. “
Wage theft, which can occur with non-payment of minimum wage to staff, misclassification of staff as independent contractors or executives to pay overtime and tip employees, is a $50 billion challenge for American staff. It is committed through large businesses, small businesses, and even state governments, and disproportionately affects low-income staff, adding women and staff of color.
According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute and Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy. , staff to achieve better results, experts say.
Now that the maximum ARPA budget has been allocated, some policy advocates are pushing states to continue this work, forcing employers, rather than the public, to take over enforcement and the U. S. Department of Labor. The U. S. through grants, among other investment options. .
“If there are staff in an office that the employer knows . . . who know their rights and are willing to protect themselves, the employer is less likely to deliberately try to do things to steal borrowed wages, which then becomes prevention,” said Veronica Mendez Moore, co-director of the Center for Workers United in Struggle (CTUL), a worker-led organization in Minneapolis that focuses on racial justice. gender and economic. ” We’ve noticed that in many cases where once staff get up on one thing, the employer walks away from the other. “
Walsh meets with Mendez Moore’s organization, as well as New Justice Project MN, a black-run organizing center focused on economic issues, and ROC Minnesota, a hard-work rights nonprofit to discuss new developments, such as wage theft trends they see emerging. .
He said a closer relationship with those teams had helped law enforcement.
“[There are] about 300,000 workers across the city, and then 3 researchers,” he said. “It’s a difficult, almost unlikely task, to be everywhere, all the time. “
Walsh said the total ARPA investment amount allocated to the program is $750,000.
ARPA budget to the rescue
“The funds from the American Rescue Plan [Act] provided additional opportunities for this experiment,” said Rachel Deutsch, crusade director for the California Coalition for Worker Power and one of the co-authors of the EPI/Harvard report. “Now there’s this consultation of, ‘Are we just going to abandon this infrastructure because we’re acting like COVID is over or are we going to build on it to create the mechanisms that are necessary, whether or not we’re in an emergency reaction moment to talk about low wages?the staff of their rights and the employers of their obligations?'”
The report highlighted efforts in several towns and states.
In 2021, Maine introduced a program with $1 million in ARPA’s budget for job training, assistance with access to unemployment benefits and employee outreach with network organizations, the AFL-CIO and a legal aid group, according to the PPE report. In Seattle, staff from the city’s Bureau of Labor Standards hold monthly and quarterly meetings with network organizations. Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco also have close partnerships with network organizations, as do San Diego and Santa Clara counties in California.
In Iowa, the cities of Coralville, North Liberty and Iowa City and Johnson County have allocated $322,000 in ARPA’s five-year budget to the Center for Worker Justice in eastern Iowa, which investigates wage theft cases and is helping pressure employers to pay their wages. . Employees and staff helped lost wages.
Help is needed because Iowa Workforce Development is understaffed. Jesse Dougherty, the agency’s head of marketing and communications, told States Newsroom in an email that the Workforce Development Division has 4 positions to investigate unpaid wages. Two of the positions were vacant from last year, Dougherty said. Generally, about 15 to 20 more people work on salary issues or misclassification.
Mazahir Salih, who until recently was executive director of the East Iowa Workers Center for Justice, told the States Newsroom that staff don’t know how to register a complaint or that there is a law enforcement entity with which they can simply register it. They come to the CWJ through word of mouth, he said. That day, she was coordinating with organizers of a protest to recover the salary of a former employee at a local Mexican restaurant. after he tried to deposit them in his bank.
Sometimes CWJ can fix things with the employer over the phone, but if they can’t, the organization sends a letter and from there they can generate pressure on the network, adding protests and a delegation of elected officials.
“If it’s a miscommunication, we can locate ourselves on this phone call,” Salih said. “But some of them either don’t need to reach us by phone or they don’t need to give us information. “
Deutsch said he would like to see more states in the South and Southwest adopt those approaches to enforce protections against hard work and prevent you from hard work violations. She said that historically, those systems in cities with their own wage standards. Legislation that has been used through state governments to prevent their cities from raising workers’ wages and protections beyond the state’s minimum wage. Many minimum wage preference laws are concentrated in the southern states.
Community organizations also want adequate money to devote time and resources to working with law enforcement agencies. According to the report, investment disorders can be solved simply by dedicating profit streams to enforcing labor criteria and making employers pay prices through the consequences they pay for violating labor laws. Deutsch said that if philanthropic investment is a pilot program and that program is successful, it may also warrant greater public investment from those partnerships. He added that he hoped the Ministry of Labor would also use its concession force for those models. .
“As a company, we don’t really systematically fund agencies that are meant to enforce our hard work laws,” Deutsch said. “You’ll hear the recent considerations about shoplifting or whatever, and wage theft has overshadowed shoplifting and all those things. It’s a crisis and we’re just not reversing it as such.
The scope of the problem
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that staff be paid at least the federal minimum wage and overtime for all hours worked beyond 40 hours, but it is a law that is broken. Last year, the Wage and Hour Division of the Ministry of Labor recovered back wages of staff. in 13,122 instances of hard work violation in high violation and low wage industries. The industries that saw the most staff affected were restaurants, structure and retail.
by Casey Quinlan, Nebraska examiner July 4, 2023
About five years ago, Subway, Little Caesars and McDonald’s top franchised restaurants in Minneapolis failed to meet the city’s wage standards. Now, staff at sites that broke the law get the required minimum wage and time off when they are sick.
All through a co-compliance program, in which the city’s hardwork compliance firm works with network organizations to make sure certain staff are aware of their rights and have the equipment to protect themselves. Last year, it reached more than 12,000 employees and provided staff education. ‘ rights to more than 400 people. Since the program began in 2018, it has recovered more than $3 million in unpaid wages.
“Quite regularly, since we started, we win a disproportionate number of court cases or reports of infractions from restaurant staff,” said Brian Walsh, director of hard work criteria and contract enforcement at the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights, noting that the eatery industry has traditionally had most of its staff at or slightly above minimum wage. It’s kind of a frontline where some of those municipal labor criteria are rubber and they hit the road, so to speak. “
Wage theft, which can occur with non-payment of minimum wage to staff, misclassification of staff as independent contractors or executives to pay overtime and tip employees, is a $50 billion challenge for American staff. It is committed through large businesses, small businesses, and even state governments, and disproportionately affects low-income staff, adding women and staff of color.
According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute and Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy. , staff to achieve better results, experts say.
Now that the maximum ARPA budget has been allocated, some policy advocates are pushing states to continue this work, forcing employers, rather than the public, to take over enforcement and the U. S. Department of Labor. The U. S. through grants, among other investment options. .
“If there are staff in an office that the employer knows . . . who know their rights and are willing to protect themselves, the employer is less likely to deliberately try to do things to steal borrowed wages, which then becomes prevention,” said Veronica Mendez Moore, co-director of the Center for Workers United in Struggle (CTUL), a worker-led organization in Minneapolis that focuses on racial justice. gender and economic. ” We’ve noticed that in many cases where once staff get up on one thing, the employer walks away from the other. “
Walsh meets with Mendez Moore’s organization, as well as New Justice Project MN, a black-run organizing center focused on economic issues, and ROC Minnesota, a hard-work rights nonprofit to discuss new developments, such as wage theft trends they see emerging. .
He said a closer relationship with those teams had helped law enforcement.
“[There are] about 300,000 workers across the city, and then 3 researchers,” he said. “It’s a difficult, almost unlikely task, to be everywhere, all the time. “
Walsh said the total ARPA investment amount allocated to the program is $750,000.
ARPA budget to the rescue
“The funds from the American Rescue Plan [Act] provided additional opportunities for this experiment,” said Rachel Deutsch, crusade director for the California Coalition for Worker Power and one of the co-authors of the EPI/Harvard report. “Now there’s this consultation of, ‘Are we just going to abandon this infrastructure because we’re acting like COVID is over or are we going to build on it to create the mechanisms that are necessary, whether or not we’re in an emergency reaction moment to talk about low wages?the staff of their rights and the employers of their obligations?'”
The report highlighted efforts in several towns and states.
In 2021, Maine introduced a program with $1 million in ARPA’s budget for job training, assistance with access to unemployment benefits and employee outreach with network organizations, the AFL-CIO and a legal aid group, according to the PPE report. In Seattle, staff from the city’s Bureau of Labor Standards hold monthly and quarterly meetings with network organizations. Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco also have close partnerships with network organizations, as do San Diego and Santa Clara counties in California.
In Iowa, the cities of Coralville, North Liberty and Iowa City and Johnson County have allocated $322,000 in ARPA’s five-year budget to the Center for Worker Justice in eastern Iowa, which investigates wage theft cases and is helping pressure employers to pay their wages. . Employees and staff helped lost wages.
Help is needed because Iowa Workforce Development is understaffed. Jesse Dougherty, the agency’s head of marketing and communications, told States Newsroom in an email that the Workforce Development Division has 4 positions to investigate unpaid wages. Two of the positions were vacant from last year, Dougherty said. Generally, about 15 to 20 more people work on salary issues or misclassification.
Mazahir Salih, who until recently was executive director of the East Iowa Workers Center for Justice, told the States Newsroom that staff don’t know how to register a complaint or that there is a law enforcement entity with which they can simply register it. They come to the CWJ through word of mouth, he said. That day, she was coordinating with organizers of a protest to recover the salary of a former employee at a local Mexican restaurant. after he tried to deposit them in his bank.
Sometimes CWJ can fix things with the employer over the phone, but if they can’t, the organization sends a letter and from there they can generate pressure on the network, adding protests and a delegation of elected officials.
“If it’s a miscommunication, we can locate ourselves on this phone call,” Salih said. “But some of them either don’t need to reach us by phone or they don’t need to give us information. “
Deutsch said he would like to see more states in the South and Southwest adopt those approaches to enforce protections against hard work and prevent you from hard work violations. She said that historically, those systems in cities with their own wage standards. Legislation that has been used through state governments to prevent their cities from raising workers’ wages and protections beyond the state’s minimum wage. Many minimum wage preference laws are concentrated in the southern states.
Community organizations also want adequate money to devote time and resources to working with law enforcement agencies. According to the report, investment disorders can be solved simply by dedicating profit streams to enforcing labor criteria and making employers pay prices through the consequences they pay for violating labor laws. Deutsch said that if philanthropic investment is a pilot program and that program is successful, it may also warrant greater public investment from those partnerships. He added that he hoped the Ministry of Labor would also use its concession force for those models. .
“As a company, we don’t really systematically fund agencies that are meant to enforce our hard work laws,” Deutsch said. “You’ll hear the recent considerations about shoplifting or whatever, and wage theft has overshadowed shoplifting and all those things. It’s a crisis and we’re just not reversing it as such.
The scope of the problem
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that staff be paid at least the federal minimum wage and overtime for all hours worked beyond 40 hours, but it is a law that is broken. Last year, the Wage and Hour Division of the Ministry of Labor recovered back wages of staff. in 13,122 instances of hard work violation in high violation and low wage industries. The industries that saw the most staff affected were restaurants, structure and retail.
Nebraska Examiner belongs to States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported through grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c public charity (3). Nebraska Examiner maintains its editorial independence. Contact editor Cate Folsom if you have any questions: info@nebraskaexaminer. com. Follow the Nebraska reviewer on Facebook and Twitter.
Casey Quinlan is a business reporter for States Newsroom in Washington, D. C. Over the past decade, they have reported on national and state politics, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, hard work issues, education, Supreme Court news, and more for publications such as The American Independent, ThinkProgress, New Republic, Rewire News, SCOTUSblog, In These Times, and Vox.
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