The state of California has updated some important laws regarding wages and employment. These new updates are designed to give employees more leverage to collect wage and hour awards. The updates will also make it much harder for employers to resist paying workers what they are owed under California law.
SB 572 covers wage and hour award collection
The recently updated SB 572 measure makes it easier for employees to collect the awards they are owed under wage & hour law. Under the terms of this new law, the California Wage Commissioner can intervene on behalf of workers and impose a lien on real property when an employer violates employees’ wage and hour rights.
SB 572 will also make it possible place a lien on real property in order to recover any amount of penalties that are due to the Labor Commissioner. This can include funds that fall under the terms of any final citation, findings or decisions. This law has force in all matters that are brought against employers.
Wage theft can lead to criminal liability
Another recently passed California law is known as AB 1003. This is a measure that is designed to criminalize the intentional theft of wages.
AB 1003 has also been specially designed to cover gratuities (tips) that are not properly distributed to the workers who ought to receive them on top of wages. This new law defines theft of wages as the intentional withholding of wages, gratuities, benefits or other forms of compensation using unlawful means.
Any violation of this law can be penalized as grand theft. This will be the case if the amount is over $950 stolen from a single employee or $2,350 stolen from two or more employees.
To learn more about your rights as an employee in California, please see our overviews: