07/30/07 Wages

Wages. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Are you being paid fairly? I'm not talking about what you think you are worth&the national debt wouldn't come close to what most of us think we are worth. But is your employer treating you fairly? Or do you have a dispute? Washington State Labor and Industries developed the Wage Payment Act last year and recently received their first report. Dan Fazio with Farm Bureau says it was aimed pretty much at farm workers. FAZIO: The Wage Payment Act was a law that Farm Bureau and other business groups worked on with labor advocates. Labor advocates were saying that there were 100's of millions of dollars of unpaid wages and because L&I couldn't investigate that the low wage employees, particularly farm workers was what they were using, were not getting paid their wages; their last paycheck or if they were entitled to overtime or if they weren't being paid the correct hourly wage, etc. The law was put together to allow workers the ability to file a complaint. And Fazio explains the three results. FAZIO: If the employer was doing the right thing they would give them a notice of compliance. If there was an assessment, the employer would have 10 days to pay that assessment and all they would have to pay would be the wages that were owed plus any interest and there would be no penalties. If they wanted to appeal, they could appeal but they might be subject to a penalty if the agency determined that it was willful. But Fazio says that the results were surprising. FAZIO: There were 180 agricultural cases, complaints by workers, and like 530 in construction, 580 in food service, 660 in the service industry and 336 in retail sales. Of the agriculture ones, only in 16 cases was the agricultural employer had a notice of assessment and in 9 cases the agricultural employer was determined to be in compliance. Fazio says these figures were not what L&I had been expecting and that it was really good news for the Ag industry. FAZIO: Agriculture is running a pretty clean show and that's what they said. The Department of Labor and Industries has been dedicating more manpower to agricultural enforcement of wage and hour laws than other industries and we have asked them to reexamine that in light of this report. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.