Colorado employers will need to work a little bit harder to ensure that they are not misclassifying employees as contractors and are not shorting anyone on pay or benefits, as the state’s latest effort to fight wage theft officially took effect on Wednesday.
House Bill 1001, which was introduced on the first day of the 2025 legislative session and received final approval on the last day, is a multi-pronged effort to ramp up administrative and civil penalties against employers who commit the crime. While wage theft can involve a flat-out refusal to pay wages, it also can occur when workers don’t get benefits or allotted break times, when overtime isn’t paid at time-and-a-half to hourly employees and when full-time workers are classified as benefit-less contractors.
Legislative Democrats have pursued enforcement boosts of wage-theft law for more than a decade but saw their first setback in 2024, when Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a bill to require construction general contractors to pay wages if subcontractors stiffed their workers. Their return effort in 2025 widened their focus from the construction sector to all industries and tackles the issue in a wide variety of ways.
The provisions of the new law, which went into effect Wednesday with a bevy of other laws 90 days after adjournment of the 2025 session, include:
ProPhase Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRHP) reported Monday that it became aware of the unsealing of a previously sealed civil lawsuit under the False Claims Act in the United States District Court for the ...