Claims of wage theft filed by California workers are routinely left in limbo for years by state investigators who are facing a massive backlog of cases, according to a recent audit of the California Labor Commissioner’s office. The Labor Commissioner would need “hundreds of additional positions under its existing process to resolve the backlog,” California State Auditor Grant Parks wrote in a letter accompanying the audit to Gov. Wage theft occurs when employers fail to pay minimum wage or overtime rates or force workers to forgo legally required break times. State law requires that a decision be made on a wage claim within 135 days from when it was first filed. We need the state to deal with it,” Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, said of the audit’s findings.

Source: Los Angeles Times May 31, 2024 21:02 UTC