Assembly Standing Committee on Labor and Employment

Is it possible to project the last of the slides just so that I can show you? There are actually a few other states that have a really broadly applicable prejudgment wage Lien. Right? So Lien, not levy.

Right? Because lien is yeah. You like and you're all if you all have a lien on your stuff right now. You just may not know it. Right?

Like, if you have ever financed a car, that's that's a lien. Like, the the company that financed that car could force the sale of your car and recover what they're owed. Right? So it's like something that we operate with all the time. I just like to demystify the word because it sounds so technical.

But okay. So if you look at Washington, Maryland pardon me. I'm trying to get my little friend moving here. There are three states that have it's like okay. It's the wage liens nationally that have broad access to these prejudgment liens.

Here in California, we've actually had one in the construction sector forever, like, since the first California constitution. So if you, like, improve a property with your labor, you get to file a lien on the property that you improved with your labor for the amount that you were owed for that. Right?

So that's called a mechanic's lien. And it's crazy if you go to, like, Home Depot or Lowe's, you can get a mechanic's lien, you know, multi duplicate sheet that you can just fill out. These are very, very common. And that mechanic's lien, you can file as soon as the dispute arises.

So we ran a clinic at the labor center for four years for day laborers to file mechanics liens, and we had a ninety three percent success rate within four months because it shifts the burden onto the owner of the property that got improved. And the owner of the property is incentivized.

It builds in a market incentive instead of to evade the law, but rather to, like, comply with it or make sure that anybody that they hire is complying with the law.

Right? So we've seen there are some states that have broad access, and they have had high collections rates resulting from this broad access. So Wisconsin, Maryland, and Washington.

If you look at, Washington in 2022, they changed their law to allow most workers to file this kind of prejudgment lien on real property as soon as a wage dispute began. It can be against the employing firm or the property just like a mechanic's lien where the work was performed.

So far, it's being used by private attorneys, but that includes like nonprofit worker advocates, our sisterships, like wage theft coalitions up in the state of Washington. And it's resulting in quick resolutions.

We have some initial data on that, but I just wanted to show you guys overall that this is not something that hasn't been done before. It's not something super wacky.

It's something that has a pretty tried and true remedy that I'm hoping, as my colleague Ruth mentioned here, like, I'm I'm hoping that we can remove the requirement under Section two thirty eight Point five that there has to already be a judgment against the actual entity itself.

That's a really big hindrance. Yeah. And then it's also that Lien is only available at the labor commissioner. Mechanics' Liens are available to everybody. Like, as soon as you experience it, you can go personally file it or you can help get an attorney like myself or Ruth or you can get anybody to help you file it.

Yeah.

And, for example very few things shock me in these hearings anymore, but to hear the change in ownership 21 times. Was pretty shocking.

But it's all the same people.

Names. Different names. You could look down and see all the different names, but it was always Crazy Buffet, but they registered it with under different names, and so it was very, very difficult. And it it was very resource intent to set intensive. And, yeah, exactly what Tia said.

The fact that you have to have a judgment because they can run and pay the judgment, and then it's a useless remedy. But then they have 50 other well, not 50, but let's say 14 others or that they have. So they're habitual offenders and yet you can't get at them, and this would be the most powerful.

Understood. Can since you're already touching on things, do you wanna go ahead and talk about some of your ideas in terms of improvement?

Ruth's eight point plan.

Yes. Eight point plan. Okay. Alright. One, amend labor code section two thirty eight point four to allow the JEU instead of DSS to issue mandatory stock orders to care facilities and develop a process with DSS to close the care home and transfer patients as is done when there is a elder abuse or sanitation issues.

They don't seem to have a problem then. But all of a sudden now, they wanna keep them open because wage theft isn't important.

For just real quick for those, you know, who might be watching this, hearing later and don't really understand the acronyms, do you mind Oh. Naming the agencies? Yeah.

Judgment enforcement unit. DSS is the Department of Social Services.

Thank you. Sorry. No. It's okay.

And I know. Yes. Acronyms are difficult. Enact A bill comparable to AB 485. In other words, I would like the original version of that bill.

Fund more JEU positions. There are 20 local labor commission offices in the state. There should be at least three JEU positions in every office. And if they start early and they really work with the deputies, we would see even more of a collection rate. The budget committee is considering 14.

I mean, it's good to have even 14, but that's not enough. And that, as you've heard, a prejudgment lien like a mechanics lien. And like Tia, I've had great success. I mean, they call and say, where where can I bring the money? Remove and you've heard this one.

Remove the reference to labor code 238, which is the prior unpaid wage theft judgment. So 238.2 and 3, incorporate by reference 238, which refers to the preexisting unpaid judgment. Amend Labor Code 238.5 upstream liability provision to include more industries beyond property services and long term care businesses.

Seven, for care home for care homes, amend 238.5 or pass another statute to impose wage liability on whoever owns the real estate that the care home operates on. That would make a huge difference.

And I was just talking to the worker you're gonna hear from, Tess, about how many of the care homes are owned by others because that owner will get on that care home and make them pay. And finally, this is very similar to what Tia was saying.

Expand license revocation provisions to include the revocation of liquor licenses in the face of unpaid wage judgments and ensure that any forced sale of the license gives preference to the employee's wage claim. So those those are the eight points.

Can you talk to me? I oh, go ahead. Sorry.

I just wanted to make a clarification because I know earlier you had mentioned the receivership for the liquor license. So that's a different process in terms of what you're talking about.

You wanna explain? You can. Well, so receivership exists presently once you get converted to a judgment. So it's one of the ways that, you know, if you get a judgment that's any judgment. Right?

If you get a judgment for a dog bite or a car accident, one of the ways that you can enforce it, that you can force somebody to pay you what they owe you is to take anything of value they have and place it into receivership.

You can't do it with every single thing, but you can do it with liquor licenses in certain cases. SB 588 didn't amend receivership provisions. Right?

So SB 58 left receivership alone, but I added it because I wanted you guys to know what it was.

And what Ruth is suggesting is to expand not just the Receivers. Yes. Expand receivership to, say, liquor licenses in the face of unpaid wage judgments and prioritize the sale of those licenses, prioritize the workers' wage claim to any of the creditors. Yeah. Right.

And the way just so you guys know, the way it stands right now with respect to enforcing a judgment, you can you can allow the labor commissioner to enforce it for you or you can enforce it yourself.

And if you do that, you go to the courthouse and you get it reduced to a judgment and then a writ of execution. And that writ of execution is a piece of paper that lets the sheriff go do any of these things. Right?

Or it lets the receiver you hire a receiver like a trustee to take the liquor license or whatever the property is that you're placing into receivership.

So if you go down to the sheriff's office, you have to hire the sheriff, and you pay the sheriff time and a half in order for them to go out and do it. You have to give them very detailed instructions. Are they gonna do a till tap? Are they gonna do a keeper? What are they gonna do?

Are they gonna levy? Are they gonna go to the bank and take money directly from the till, etcetera, which is why we see these mail levies being so wildly successful because the worker doesn't have to go freaking hire hire a sheriff on her own. Right?

This is a worker who didn't hire an attorney in the first place. This is a worker in a low wage industry. This is a worker who doesn't wanna walk into a sheriff's office and pay time and a half in order to actually go enforce what she's owed anyway.

Right? And then the you can make the employer pay that time and a half that the sheriff spent. Good luck. Just so you guys understand, like, the mechanics. It's not a mystery. I want you to know how it works.

There there's also some of our workers that have higher judgments. They don't wanna wait, and they get some lawyers that aren't anywhere near the, the caliber of the attorneys at the Labor Commission because we've known these people forever when they

were at Wage Justice, and they are they're encyclopedic. They are the highest level. I mean, we really love them. I just hope they never leave. But they go to these people who charge 40%. There's an I found the lowest one.

There's a guy in San Francisco, Greg Gruneweld, who charges 25%, you know, because if the workers are insisting I mean, why should they lose that much of their wages? That's why this is so critical. I mean, you have excellent people.

They know all the tools, and we really need to beef them up because what's the point of winning a a judgment which gets recorded immediately if you don't get paid?

Chloe, you mentioned a couple of was it Pablo and Elvira who we were able to get their wage claims? Can you talk to me a little bit more about how that came about and what about this bill led to an actual case where we they get their money back?

Sure. So that was an example of individual wage claims. Although there's also, you know, ongoing investigation into the practices of at Winco. But this was an individual wage claim that we received assistance also from legal aid at work on.

And they were able to indicate responsibility up the chain to WinCo to make sure that when it came time to get that ODA, that WinCo understood their responsibility and wanted to make that go away. Right?

And I think that's what I talked a little bit about with Optum too. We did a a public press conference in front of Optum to highlight what was in the law, which is you can't wash your hands of the responsibility for the the violations by the contractor who you hired,

who is doing cleaning in your buildings that you need in order to have a functioning urgent care, for example, or a functioning grocery store that's hygienic.

And so it is the understanding of their liability under the law, and it's also the potential threat of knowing what these tools are that it that is gonna force you to pay anyway that that makes the relationship in the industry is the client is the boss.

The client is setting the amounts and who gets the bid when they put a contract out to bid.

And so if you are putting out a bid to for janitorial contracting services and one of your contractors comes in at half the price of the other bidders, you should know that something's going on there.

Right? You should know that there's no way you can get that work done without those costs coming off of the backs of workers.

And so this law, both in the individual wage claim arena and in the bureau of field enforcement where the whole company is being investigated by the labor commissioner's office,

says you as the client don't get to pretend like you didn't know what was happening or you should have known what was happening there.

Thank you. We can be here all afternoon. Unfortunately, we have to move on to our next panel, but I wanna thank you for all of your work and your testimony today. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, guys. Next, I'm gonna introduce our next panel, which is the worker experience with wage theft and the recovering process.

With us today is Martha Lepe Martinez, a home care worker, Daniela Urban, executive director of the Centers for Worker Rights, and Tess Briante, residential care facility worker.

First, I wanna thank you. I know it's not easy to come to Sacramento and share your stories, and I know that it takes a lot of sacrifice and a lot of courage.

Part of the reason that this is such a you know, I've dedicated my career to fighting for and being the voice of workers, but it really started when I was a little girl. In fact, my dad was a worker. When I was nine years old, he was a restaurant worker.

He worked as a dishwasher for thirteen years. And one day, his employer stole his wages.

And he tried to get those wages back, but he couldn't. And he came home and he said he asked me, what am I gonna do? I said, we're gonna go there tomorrow, and we're gonna get your wages back. This is Liz at nine years old. We went, and I didn't know anything about loss.

I didn't know anything about who to call or what to do, but I knew that my dad woke up every single morning, worked 13-14 hours a day, came home, slept two hours, and then went to his second job. And so I knew that the wages were his.

He had earned those wages, and no one had the right to steal them. And we went and got I went and got his money back. But, unfortunately, not everyone has a Liz and we have laws.

We have laws in place, and we have people in place that should be that voice and should hold employers like that bad employer to account to prevent this from happening from anyone else. But, unfortunately, we have thousands of these cases.

My dad's case is not alone. We have thousands of them. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this hearing, wage theft is a crime, and it is a crime that is not taken as seriously as other crimes in this country.

So I wanna thank you again for being here and sharing your stories with us today. Whenever you are ready.

Good afternoon, everyone. I am Tess Briante, and I've been a caregiver in RCF for seven years. And I stand before you today not only for myself, but for many caregivers who continue to suffer in silence. I want to share my story. This is not just my story, but our reality.

I have experienced abuse and many hardships in this line of work. There were times when I was paid less than minimum wage. I was only paid for 8 hours even though I was working twelve hours.

Imagine that four hours of unpaid labor every single day, and it does not stop there. When I wake up in the middle of the night to change patient's diaper or help them to go to the bathroom, I am not paid for that.

We are not paid for our breaks, our mealtimes, and even sick leave. So for us, it is simply no work, no pay. If you get sick, you don't get paid. If you get endured on the job, you rest, but without pay.

Some caregivers I know are even asked to clean swimming pools or take care of gardens with no pay.

We also do not receive proper benefits for workers' compensation. This is our reality. Sometimes I ask myself, when will we be valued? We give so much of ourselves, not just our physical strength, but our hearts. We care for people as if they are our own family.

But why does it feel like we are the ones who are not valued? And when we try to stand up for ourselves, when we try to file claims of the labor commission, it is very difficult. It is intimidating. It is exhausting.

Many of caregivers are afraid to speak up and file claims, afraid of losing their jobs, afraid we will be hire not hired again, or afraid of retaliation.

But I am here today on behalf of all caregivers. Please hear us. Please help us make the process of filing wage claims at the Labor Commission faster, clearer, and more fair. Hold abusive employers accountable. Ensure that every hour we work is paid.

Even when caregivers win their cases and receive judgment, the struggle is not over. Collecting that judgment is very hard. I was fortunate because I was able to get paid, but many caregivers never see a single dollar of what they are owed.

Employers know there will be no real consequences if they refuse to pay. The state will shut down care homes for human trafficking or unsafe unsanitary conditions, but not for failing to pay wage theft judgment even though the law allows it.

Care homeowners should not be allowed to keep their licenses if they do not pay what they owe. Without accountability, there is no incentive for them to stop committing wage theft. And this is what I always say to my fellow caregivers. Do not be afraid. I know it is hard.

I know it is scary, but we have rights. Let us file cases against abusive employers.

Thank you very much.

Let us fight for wages we have rightfully earned, not just for ourselves, but also for all the caregivers who will come after us because we deserve dignity, we deserve fairness, and we deserve justice.

Okay,

Martha. Yeah.

Martinez. Good afternoon. My name is Marta Lepe Martinez. I worked for eight years as a caregiver for miss Victoria Chavez. I was contracted by her son, Nick Ugarte. During this time, I suffered wage theft, and I am owed more than $300,000.

After the death of the woman I cared for in 2017, Nick cut off all communications with me and didn't even permit me to attend her funeral. A little after, my husband and I were evicted, and we faced a a big crisis both economically and emotionally.

With the help of the center for workers rights, I opened a claim with the labor commissioner's office. I had hoped that this process would be fast and I would be able to reinvent my life.