It’s supposed to be easy to make your boss pay up for lost wages. Instead it takes years

For years, California has struggled to address a mounting backlog of workers claiming labor law violations, even as it collected millions of dollars from employers each year for enforcement. Now, a judge’s order may force the state to solve the problem. 

The state’s Labor Commissioner’s Office faces a lawsuit this year from workers who say the office is failing to address the backlog. 

The suit concerns the wage claim system — in which workers alleging that they were paid less than the minimum wage, denied meal and rest breaks or otherwise owed wages by their bosses — can submit a claim to the state’s labor regulators. The wage claim system was originally intended to be an easy way for low-wage workers to get a quick, state-run hearing without having to slog through the courts. If a state hearing officer decides in the worker’s favor, employers could be ordered to pay up. 

State law requires the Labor Commissioner’s Office to resolve cases within about four months. But in recent years, workers have waited years before hearing back from the office.

In 2023, after CalMatters and other news outlets documented long waits and low payouts for workers claiming wage theft, lawmakers ordered an audit. The 2024 audit blamed understaffing and found a backlog of 47,000 claims and wait times of well over six times the legal limit. 

This month, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Rebekah Evenson refused to dismiss one of the lawsuits against the commissioner. It was brought by employment law firm Moss Bollinger and the nonprofit Legal Aid At Work on behalf of a Santa Monica hotel worker. The worker had waited more than a year after filing a claim to hear back from the labor agency — and only got a hearing scheduled after they filed the lawsuit. 

• Alexx Campbell, senior staff attorney at Legal Aid At Work: “Most low-wage workers have no practical way to recover stolen wages because the Labor Commissioner’s wage claim process is broken. Laws protecting workers are meaningless if there is no way to enforce them.”

California collects millions of dollars a year for enforcement from other lawsuits that workers file against their employers. Yet, it has left hundreds of millions of dollars in that fund go unspent in recent years, even as its wage claim backlog and staff vacancies rose.

The state has even loaned that money to its general fund to plug budget holes, CalMatters reported in 2024. A spokesperson for the labor agency said that year that the practice is normal. 

In a year of big returns, the chief executive of California’s largest public employee pension fund received a big bonus too — to the tune of $1.15 million.

As CalMatters’ Adam Ashton explains, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s chief executive, Marcie Frost, secured her first seven-figure bonus after leading CalPERS for a decade. Last year, her bonus was $766,000.

Frost’s base salary is now $641,000, which includes an additional raise by the board.

Due in part to a robust stock market, the fund last year gained a 14.8% investment return, more than doubling its goal. As of Wednesday, the portfolio is worth $652 billion. 

The board president called Frost a “CEO on top of her game.” But not everyone was in favor of the bonus: Two of 13 board members voted against it, and several retirees affiliated with the group Retired Public Employees Association, spoke out in opposition.

• Margaret Brown, who leads the association and is a former CalPERS board member: “There is something fundamentally wrong when public service compensation begins looking like Wall Street compensation.”

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Federal authorities said Wednesday that they charged three nonprofit workers as part of a wider investigation into homelessness funding fraud in Los Angeles, reports Nick Gerda of LAist.

Law enforcement arrested Michael Young, founder of the nonprofit Home At Last in Culver City, alleging that he misappropriated $12 million in taxpayer funds, including spending $1 million to finance a nightclub.

Authorities also charged Lakiya Malone, an employee of the nonprofit Special Service for Groups, for allegedly taking $180,000 in bribes from the head of another nonprofit, whom Malone allegedly referred “ghost” participants to for homelessness services that were never received.

And Donye Mitchell, an executive of the nonprofit Big Blue Umbrella, is accused of fraudulently securing a $1.2 million county-funded grant. 

These arrests are related to a broader federal probe targeting homelessness spending in L.A. that began last April. CalMatters in 2023 investigated tenant complaints regarding a division of Special Services Groups called HOPICS, which paid middlemen landlords who displaced tenants when the nonprofit didn’t pay rent on time.

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