TESTIMONY BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

PR22-0982: DIRECTOR OF DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES

UNIQUE MORRIS-HUGHES CONFIRMATION RESOLUTION OF 2018

Chairwoman Silverman, Members of the Committee, Citizens and Residents of the District of Columbia, Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Daniel A. Katz and I am a Senior Counsel for Employment Justice at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you in the context of Dr. Morris-Hughes’ confirmation hearing as Director of the Department of Employment Services (“DOES”).

For some fifty years, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee has labored to defend the rights of working people, and to address the issues of poverty, racism, and other forms of discrimination. To most effectively meet these challenges, the Lawyers’ Committee works with a broad array of community groups, labor unions, faith communities, and law firms across the District and throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Among these efforts are our workers’ rights clinics, which each month assist over 100 low-wage District of Columbia workers who face wage theft, discrimination on the job, illegal terminations, and employers who otherwise do not comply with legal protections. In addition to these workers’ rights clinics, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee litigates claims on behalf of employees who have faced discrimination and wage theft on the job.

DOES enforces some of the most effective worker protections in the country. In the areas of wage and hour, sick leave, family medical leave, and first source employment, among others, DOES has the opportunity and responsibility to ensure that District of Columbia employees benefit from these protections. We urge Dr. Morris-Hughes to use the full force of her position to consistently urge the Council to fund statutory enforcement of worker protections. While many of the statutes that DOES enforces allow for private enforcement, there is no substitute for the agency’s authority and resources when it comes to protecting low wage workers’ rights to the wages they have earned, or the leave they require.

Given the reality that enforcement resources available to DOES will be limited, we urge DOES to prioritize its enforcement efforts so as to have the greatest impact on behalf of low wage workers.

DOES previously identified industries targeted for education and enforcement of wage and hour laws. These include hospitality, healthcare, construction and the restaurant industry. We urge DOES to aggressively utilize its outreach resources to conduct on-site education of employees regarding their protections under D.C. statutes. Moreover, we urge DOES to utilize community and labor organizations to assist in this outreach. DOES must ensure that D.C. workers receive – where they work – accessible information regarding their rights and protections. In addition, we note that the Council has approved modifications to the statutory notice requirements that mandate the employee rights notices employers must provide on-site. We urge DOES to utilize its outreach to employers to ensure that the changes in the notice provisions do not diminish employers’ responsibility to notify their employees of their rights.

Wage theft is rampant in the District of Columbia. Each month, the workers’ rights clinics speak with over 100 low-wage District of Columbia workers, many of whom have not been paid the minimum wage, not paid overtime wages, not paid for all the hours they worked, or simply, not paid. Each worker not paid represents a family whose income has been stolen, whose rent becomes unpayable, whose medical insurance may lapse, who cannot afford to buy healthy food.

DOES must invigorate investigation of complaints so that when a worker files a wage theft complaint, DOES effectively investigates the claim within the timeframe the statute mandates. When DOES enforces violations of the wage statute, it must do so to the full extent permitted under the statute so that employers who steal wages are deterred from doing it again. Simply put, if DOES does no more than collect wages that were owed to an employee in the first place – and does not collect additional statutory damages from the employer – unscrupulous employers have no incentive to comply with the law in the first place.

DOES must monitor the complaints it receives so that repeat offenders are identified and penalized, so that they are not allowed to do business in the District of Columbia. I urge DOES to work closely with its community and labor partners who daily receive reports and document those employers who regularly do not pay their employees. This targeted enforcement has far-reaching effects. If a labor broker in the construction industry is forced to pay four times in wages what it should have paid when workers earned the money, the word spreads throughout the industry that such practices will not be tolerated.

Each month we hear from workers whose employer has threatened them should they complain about statutory violations. Retaliation and the threat of retaliation is illegal. When DOES receives complaints of such retaliation, it is imperative that these be immediately investigated, and if found credible, punished. Again, unscrupulous employers only understand the law if they are forced to comply with it.

We urge DOES to review and simplify the process by which individuals file wage theft complaints. DOES should do away with any impediment to the processing of a complaint, such as the superfluous requirement that claims be notarized. DOES should work with its partners so that community events are locales at which workers can access DOES complaint procedures. On-line filing must be fully accessible by mobile device, the means by which most low wage workers access the internet. Given the wide-spread wage theft suffered by the immigrant community, language access services must be available to those who walk in to file complaints, who file complaints on line, who call for services, and who pursue their claims before administrative judges.

We are heartened by Dr. Morris-Hughes willingness to meet with the Just Pay Coalition and other community and labor groups to address enforcement issues. We urge that DOES include in these conversations staff members who are responsible for outreach and enforcement, so that they can best implement recommendations that arise from these meetings.

We look forward to following up on all of these recommendations and working with Dr. Morris-Hughes and the DOES staff so that low wage workers in the District of Columbia are not victimized by unscrupulous employers.

Thank you.