The Worker’s View: New legislation a welcome safeguard for low-wage and immigrant workers

For many workers, receiving an official pay stub from their employer – one with the employee’s name, net and gross wages, any tax deductions, the number of hours worked, and their hourly wage, in addition to the employer’s name and address – is such a basic expectation that they assume all workers receive a pay stub each pay period. However, prior to the passage of House Bill 106, alternately known as the Pay Stub Protection Act, this wasn’t always the case for the most vulnerable workers.

Now in effect, the Pay Stub Protection Act requires all employees to receive a pay stub, which is particularly beneficial for low-wage and immigrant workers who are at a higher risk of exploitation by their employers. Under the legislation, workers who are victims of wage theft can now send a written letter to their employer, who is obligated to provide a pay stub within 10 days. If the employer doesn’t comply, the employee can file a complaint with the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Wage and Hour division. 

“[Before the Pay Stub Protection Act], we have seen that workers don’t have clarity of how much they are really earning. They don’t even know specifically who is paying them,” said Isbel Alvarado, a case manager and community organizer at the Central Ohio Worker Center (COWC), who as one example pointed to the construction industry, where workers are sometimes recruited to a job site without being given pertinent information. “We receive a lot of calls … in which one person who is related to this big construction company is the one who’s asking, ‘Can you work for us? Can you bring a couple more workers?’ The person never provides their full name and never says the name of the company, so when [workers] are not given a pay stub, they can’t identify who the employer even is.” 

In addition to basic concerns about knowing how much money they can expect in order to manage their budget, not having basic information about who owes them what amount makes it more challenging for workers to file a formal complaint if they experience wage theft or unpaid wages. Many workers are forced to keep their own records documenting the pay rate they were promised, the number of hours they worked, and where they logged this time, assuming they are even willing and able to move forward with making a complaint. 

Undocumented and low-wage workers, who suffer from wage theft at disproportionately higher rates, are at particular risk, as are tipped workers. In the restaurant industry, for instance, employers are required to make up the difference when a worker’s tips don’t add up to minimum wage – something that doesn’t always happen. 

“About 213,000 Ohioans experience wage theft each year through minimum wage violations alone,” said Heather Smith, a work and wages researcher at Policy Matters Ohio, who shared that 18 percent of low-paid workers experience wage theft compared with 4 percent of all workers, costing the average victim $55 a week, or $2,900 a year. “There are a lot of different other types of wage theft, like not paying for overtime [and] listing somebody as an independent contractor rather than an employee, which messes up their tax deductions.”

Beyond wage theft, providing pay stubs can help low-wage workers with things such as finding housing, since many landlords require proof of employment. For workers whose primary language is not English, receiving a written pay stub can also make it easier to translate and analyze the information. 

“Pay stubs help with everyday things like going to the bank and opening an account or finding a place to rent,” Alvardo said. “Denying paystubs can be a tax evasion thing, but it can also be about control and a lack of transparency, because [the companies] don’t want to comply with what they have to do.” 

While the passage of HB106 is welcome news, there are few enforcement mechanisms in place to rein in employers who steal from their workers, particularly at the state level. “The federal government has enforcement mechanisms, but in the Ohio Revised Code, we don’t have any type of monetary penalty imposed for not holding their records or violating the Pay Stub Act, for example,” Smith said.  

Currently, workers can file complaints at the state level with the Ohio Department of Commerce and at the federal level with the Department of Labor. For workers to get justice in Ohio, the Attorney General would have to take the case. Given that that state’s Attorney General Dave Yost self-describes as “a conservative leader” and “a strong advocate for Ohio’s businesses,” it is difficult to imagine him standing up for the workers most affected by wage theft. (Asked how often Yost takes on such cases, Smith said, “It’s not very frequent.”)

The Trump administration is, of course, not making matters any easier at the federal level. The Internal Revenue Service has begun collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to share the tax information of undocumented workers with the aim of increasing deportations. This is yet another blow to an already vulnerable undocumented immigrant community that in 2022 paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes.

“We serve a huge number of immigrants who work super hard and move this economy, and they’re being affected. If they’ve always had a fear about moving forward with their [wage theft] complaints, imagine now,” Alvarado said. “There’s more fear of retaliation, not only employment retaliation, but immigration retaliation. There has always been that fear, but now it’s more than ever.”

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