St. Pete City Council has advanced a wage theft ordinance out of committee. It will be heard at the council meeting on April 2 after clearing the Committee of the Whole Thursday afternoon.
City Council member Darden Rice proposed a wage theft ordinance that would set a citywide procedure for employees to lodge complaints and launch investigations into employers who aren’t paying them all of the wages they’re due.
Wage theft can include not paying a worker for all of the hours they worked, requiring employees to come to work early, but not clock in right away or working off the clock. It can be uncompensated overtime or even a wage below the state’s minimum or less than the employee was supposed to earn.
According to Rice, wage theft occurs most often among tipped workers and low-wage workers.
The ordinance going before City Council on first reading establishes a means by which employees can file a claim with the city clerk to claim lost wages.
The average wage theft claim in Pinellas County is estimated at about $500. Some 15,000 employees were affected over a year and a half and that’s just those who reported it.
“It’s pretty safe to say that those numbers could easily be two or three times higher than what’s reported,” Rice said.
Part of the problem with current wage theft laws are that it requires an employee to go through the federal Department of Labor to file a claim. That process can be long and burdensome and many workers don’t even know a process exists.
Rice said the state offers little help and people seeking lost wages are often left with no other choice than to pursue their employer through a civil suit.
“Frankly, some of the claims are so low it’s not really worth the time or effort,” she said. “When you’re working on a paycheck to paycheck basis those amounts of money can really have a big impact on your finances and really set you back.”
Rice called the situation in Pinellas County an epidemic and welcomed County Commissioner Ken Welch to the meeting. He observed from a chair among the public.
Pinellas County is watching St. Pete closely to develop its own symbiotic ordinance.
St. Pete’s ordinance is based on one out of Miami-Dade County. Legal staff didn’t stray far from what was included in that ordinance because it has already been challenged and upheld in court.
One addition St. Pete is tacking on, though, is a strong retaliation component. Employers who are found to have taken action against an employee because they filed a wage theft claim could wind up liable for those lost wages.
There are some loopholes noted in the proposed ordinance. Council member Jim Kennedy pointed out there is little recourse for an employee to recoup legal expenses if they sought civil litigation.
Also, once an employee has won a wage theft dispute, there seems to be little way to enforce that employee actually receiving the money.
Still, the ordinance is seen largely as a detractor for bad employers who Rice says steal from their employees to get ahead.
Once employers have had a case filed against them it becomes public record. Rice said its possible to use that as a tool to further discourage wage theft at its source by making those records more accessible to the public to shine a light on problem employers.
However, it was pointed out that could cause problems of its own if employers sought defamation damages against the city.
The Committee of the Whole was mostly supportive of the ordinance save for those few concerns.
One item that will likely be addressed is adding a provision to protect employers who accidentally withhold wages from employers. Council member Karl Nurse, who runs his own business and handles payroll, pointed out that requiring employees to receive payment for work completed within two weeks may be hard for employers who function on two-week pay periods. He asked that the language be changed to 14 business days to alleviate any concern.
The city’s legal department said that change isn’t a problem.
“St. Petersburg is a city that’s not going to tolerate bad employers who try to get by by stealing from their employees,” Rice said.
Wage theft was the sole item discussed at Thursday’s Committee of the Whole meeting.
