All Iowans deserve to get paid for the work they do. Strengthening Iowa’s middle class depends on it. Sadly, $600 million in wages are stolen from Iowa workers each year.
Iowa’s wage theft laws are so weak that they are impossible to enforce. The result? Iowa workers get ripped off by unscrupulous employers, and the majority of businesses that play by the rules are put at a disadvantage.
Most Iowans aren’t at risk of being cheated by their employer, but low-wage workers often are, and they’re the ones with the most to lose. This week at the Statehouse, Katie Wilson and Justin Banks, servers at the Coralville Applebee’s, talked of their fight to get their share of tips illegally taken from them by management.
Valentine Ruiz of Conesville described his ongoing fight to get paid for $1,200 of welding work he did in 2012 for a company in West Liberty. Because three other people had similar complaints, Iowa Workforce Development sought and won a judgment for back pay and interest. However, no penalty was imposed, and Mr. Ruiz has yet to receive any of the money owed him.
Just hiring more investigators won’t fix this problem. We need laws that make it clear you must pay your workers, and make it easier and safer for workers to stand up for their rights. Proposed legislation would make Iowa’s law more straightforward with these three changes:
- Employers would be required to keep a written record of the terms of employment.
- The defense that an employer “unintentionally” failed to pay employees would no longer be acceptable.
- Employees filing wage theft claims and those who offer testimony on their behalf would be protected from retaliation under threat of penalty.
The Iowa Senate approved reforms to our state’s wage theft law in 2011 and 2014, but the bills were not brought up for debate in the Iowa House.
For more information on the problem of wage theft in Iowa, read the Iowa Policy Project’s report at www.iowapolicyproject.org/2012docs/120829-wagetheft-xs.pdf.