BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 1342|
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Bill No: SB 1342
Author: Mendoza (D)
Amended: 5/26/16
Vote: 21
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: 6-0, 4/26/16
AYES: Jackson, Anderson, Hertzberg, Leno, Monning, Wieckowski
NO VOTE RECORDED: Moorlach
SENATE FLOOR: 38-0, 5/2/16
AYES: Allen, Anderson, Bates, Beall, Berryhill, Block,
Cannella, De León, Fuller, Gaines, Galgiani, Glazer, Hall,
Hancock, Hernandez, Hill, Hueso, Huff, Jackson, Lara, Leno,
Leyva, Liu, McGuire, Mendoza, Mitchell, Monning, Moorlach,
Morrell, Nguyen, Nielsen, Pan, Pavley, Roth, Stone, Vidak,
Wieckowski, Wolk
NO VOTE RECORDED: Hertzberg, Runner
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 78-0, 6/16/16 (Consent) - See last page for
vote
SUBJECT: Wages: investigations: subpoenas
SOURCE: Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
DIGEST: This bill specifies that a legislative body of a city
or county is authorized to delegate that bodys authority to
issue subpoenas and to report noncompliance thereof to the judge
of the superior court of the county, to a county or city
official or department head in order to enforce any local law or
ordinance, including local wage laws. The bill provides
legislative findings in support of this provision.
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Assembly Amendments clarify that local wage laws are included in
the phrase "any local law or ordinance."
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Provides, generally, that a county board of supervisors may
perform acts required by law, or which are necessary to
discharge the duties of the legislative authority of the
county government. (Government Code Section 25207.)
2)Provides that when a state law or local ordinance provides
that a hearing be held or that findings of fact or conclusions
of law be made by any county board, agency, commission, or
committee, the county hearing officer may be authorized by
ordinance or resolution to conduct the hearing; to issue
subpoenas; to receive evidence; to administer oaths; to rule
on questions of law and the admissibility of evidence; and to
prepare a record of the proceedings. (Government Code Section
27721.)
3)Authorizes the legislative body of a city to issue subpoenas
requiring attendance of witnesses or production of books or
other documents for evidence or testimony in any action or
proceeding before it. (Government Code Section 37104.)
4)Provides that if any person who is duly subpoenaed neglects or
refuses to obey a subpoena, or, appearing, refuses to testify
or answer any questions which a majority of the legislative
body decide proper and pertinent, the mayor shall report the
fact to the judge of the superior court of the county.
(Government Code Section 37106.)
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5)Holds that the fact that the California Constitution does not
expressly grant to charter counties the specific authority to
give its county officers power to issue subpoenas does not
mean that charter counties do not have the power to do so.
(Dibb v. County of San Diego (1994) 8 Cal 4th 1200, and cases
cited therein.)
This bill:
1)Makes findings and declarations relating to the problem of
wage theft and the enforcement of local minimum wage
ordinances, including the authority to issue subpoenas in
support of enforcing such ordinances. States the intent of
the Legislature to promote honest pay for fair work by giving
appropriate investigatory tools to the local law enforcement
programs.
2)Specifies that the legislative body of a city or county may
delegate to a county or city official or department head its
authority to issue subpoenas and to report noncompliance
thereof to the judge of the superior court of the county, in
order to enforce any local law or ordinance, including, but
not limited to, local wage laws.
3)Finds and declares that these provisions do not constitute a
change in, but are declaratory of, existing law.
Background
Across the country, with California leading the way, cities and
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counties are passing their own minimum wage laws, often with
significantly higher wages than currently exist at the state and
federal level. In 2014, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly
approved a ballot measure to gradually raise the city's minimum
wage to $15 an hour by 2018. Last year the Los Angeles City
Council voted to establish a city minimum wage that will reach
$15 an hour by 2021, followed soon thereafter by a measure by
Los Angeles County. San Jose adopted a city minimum wage in 2012
and smaller cities have recently done the same, including
Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Sunnyvale, Emeryville, Mountain
View, Santa Clara, and San Diego. Last month the Legislature,
ensuring that California maintains the highest minimum wage in
the country, approved a plan to raise the minimum wage of the
entire state to $15 per hour over the next six years.
However, delivering on the promise of higher wages rests largely
on the ability of cities, counties, and the state to put
enforcement systems in place and fight the wage theft that
low-wage workers often experience. Wage theft, generally, is
when workers are not paid the wages to which they are legally
entitled. This can occur when workers receive payment at a rate
below the legal hourly minimum, when employees are not paid for
off-the-clock work, are not properly paid overtime, or fail to
get required rest and meal breaks, among other violations.
Significant and extensive minimum wage violations have been
documented around the country and in cities throughout
California, as described by a recent report:
Significant and extensive minimum wage violations have
been documented around the country and in cities
throughout California. An analysis of worker surveys
conducted by the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics
estimates that in California, minimum wage violations
occur in any given week in 11 to 12 percent of all the
low-wage jobs in the state (Eastern Research Group 2014).
While this estimate already represents a significant
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amount of wage theft, experience suggests that official
government surveys undercount workers who are especially
vulnerable to wage theft, such as those working off the
books or who are undocumented.
Other estimates come from surveys that use alternative
sampling strategies much more likely to capture the full
range of workers in the low-wage labor market. The best
such study to date is a large representative survey of
low-wage workers in Los Angeles in 2008, which found that
30 percent had been paid below the minimum wage during the
previous week and 88 percent had at least one pay-related
violation in the previous week. The amount of underpayment
due to minimum wage violations assuming a full-year work
schedule averaged $1,135 a year per worker, or 6.9 percent
of earnings. Counting all pay-based violations, such as
unpaid overtime and off-the-clock work, workers lost
$2,070 per year, or 12.5 percent of earnings. Violations
occurred across industries and occupations, with
above-average rates of minimum wage violations in garment
manufacturing, domestic service, building services, and
department stores. (Bernhardt, Dietz, and Koonse,
Enforcing City Minimum Wage Laws in California: Best
Practices and City-State Partnerships, UCLA Center for
Labor Research and Education and UC Berkeley Center for
Labor Research and Education, Oct. 2015.)
Recovery of stolen wages requires that the employee either find
a private lawyer to sue the employer, or more commonly, file a
complaint with a government agency charged with enforcement of
labor violations. However, because low-wage workers have limited
access to private attorneys, private actions have failed to
address wage theft on a large scale. This is largely because the
relatively low value of the average complaint dramatically
reduces profit for private attorneys, even when taking 40
percent of the recovery. In addition, the difficulty private
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attorneys face when collecting from employers jeopardizes their
ability to recover their attorneys' fees and earn anything for
their effort. Thus, public enforcement plays a central role in
ensuring that workers receive the wages they are owed. This
bill, sponsored by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors,
seeks to ensure that cities and counties have the tools
necessary to enforce wage laws by clarifying that cities and
counties have the ability to delegate the authority to issue
subpoenas to a county or city official or department head.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:NoLocal: No
SUPPORT: (Verified6/17/16)
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (source)
OPPOSITION: (Verified6/17/16)
None received
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: According to the author:
Well over a dozen cities and counties have passed minimum wage
ordinances going beyond the State-mandated $10 an hour. In
many cases, however, employers do not obey these laws. In Los
Angeles County alone, workers are denied over $26 million a
week in earned wages and have no local enforcement mechanism
to assist them. ? Subpoenas are a necessary part of
conducting a full and fair investigation of alleged violations
of local ordinances because subpoenas can compel the
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production of evidence from both sides of a complaint ?
existing law grants administrative subpoena authority to the
heads of state departments to investigate matters under a
department's jurisdiction . . . many cities and counties are
uncertain or unaware of this legal authority.
Accordingly, the sponsor, the Los Angeles County Board of
Supervisors, concludes that "SB 1342 will eliminate any
uncertainty in current law that allows a county board of
supervisors or the legislative body of a city to delegate its
administrative subpoena power."
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 78-0, 6/16/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Travis Allen, Arambula, Atkins, Baker,
Bigelow, Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brown, Burke, Calderon,
Campos, Chang, Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper,
Dababneh, Dahle, Daly, Dodd, Eggman, Frazier, Beth Gaines,
Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto, Gipson,
Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove, Hadley, Harper, Holden,
Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Kim, Lackey, Levine, Linder,
Lopez, Low, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina,
Melendez, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Olsen,
Patterson, Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Santiago,
Steinorth, Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Waldron, Weber,
Wilk, Williams, Wood, Rendon
NO VOTE RECORDED: Brough, Roger Hernández
Prepared by:Nichole Rapier / JUD. / (916) 651-4113
6/20/16 11:18:34
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