UC harms low-pay workers by allowing wage theft to occur. A new law offers protection

Millions of workers each year — disproportionately low-wage, non-white workers who can least afford losses in income — face some form of wage theft. These workers often lack access to legal or union representation to help enforce their rights against employers who cheat them out of pay.

Sadly, such is the case for many employees who work for companies under contract with the University of California to deliver custodial, parking, food service and health-care services. The university spends hundreds of millions of public dollars on such contracts each year — paying hundreds of companies who employ thousands of non-UC workers.

UC’s service contracting practices have long faced well-justified scrutiny. That has come not just from labor unions representing the UC employees who would normally perform this work for higher wages and better benefits, but by the California State Auditor, who found that the UC was often laying off its own employees and hiring with contractors, and was not following or enforcing its own contracting policies. The auditor found that the non-union, non-UC employees working under these arrangements were being paid $3.86 less per hour on average than UC employees performing the same jobs at the same locations.

In late 2019, the UC Board of Regents enacted a new “Equal Pay for Equal Work” policy requiring its service or patient care contract vendors to pay their UC-assigned workers a rate equivalent to the wages and benefits that would otherwise be paid to UC employees performing the same jobs. UC agreed to these commitments in a subsequent agreement with its largest labor union, which represents 30,000 of the university’s directly employed service and patient care technical employees.

Two years later, familiar patterns are emerging. Though many of UC’s service vendors have committed in writing to follow the contractor wage policy, there is little evidence that workers have been informed about the requirements or paid the appropriate wage rates. In response to one inquiry about whether its contractors were complying with its policy, UC acknowledged that it “does not have this information.” And, because no UC unions represent the affected workers, and the University of California doesn’t directly employ them, contract workers are left with no real legal remedy to recoup lost wages.

No one can say the State Auditor didn’t try to warn us.

That’s why this year, we’ve authored and passed a bill through both houses of the Legislature, SB 1364, that would put the force of law behind UC’s wage benefit parity policy. Specifically, it would require UC service contract employers to tell their workers the parity pay rate they are entitled to, and to supply payroll information to UC or a UC labor-management committee tracking compliance. Importantly, it would give contract workers a right of action to recover any lost wages from employers in court, while giving UC’s contracted service vendors the opportunity to fix any pay-rate mistakes before facing sanctions.

It’s important to note that violations of UC’s wage policy can result in significant income loss for the lowest-paid workers in the UC system. Purchase orders and pay documentation have shown instances where contract workers who were covered by UC’s “wage-benefit parity” policy may have been shorted anywhere from $8 per hour for full-time custodial work, up to $17 per hour as full-time health-care technicians.

UC service contract workers need protections against wage theft, just like other workers. The fact is that the University of California’s inability to enforce its “wage-benefit parity” policy only invites more wage theft.

Gov. Newsom can finally put a stop to it and improve the lives of these vulnerable workers by signing SB 1364 into law.

This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 10:28 AM.