(TNS) — Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is considering new legislation to protect workers – especially low-wage earners – that will bar contractors from doing business with the county if they engage in wage theft or payroll fraud.
Under the proposed ordinance, businesses won’t even qualify for contracts if they’ve been penalized or debarred for violations within the last seven years, and current businesses caught cheating workers out of wages could have their contracts revoked and be banned from future contracts for up to five years.
Every contractor doing more than $10,000 in business in the county will also be required to complete ethics training on wage theft, the ordinance says.
The legislation is being co-sponsored by Councilmen Dale Miller, Martin J. Sweeney and Patrick Kelly, and it follows on the heels of similar legislation passed by Cleveland City Council in December. They hope it will serve as a deterrent.
“People work hard to make a living and should get paid for all the work that they do,” Miller told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer Monday. “We don’t want to see people not get paid for their work and we don’t want to see companies debarred, we want to head this stuff off before that happens and we’re hoping that this legislation will help with that.”
Wage theft is defined as any violation of state or federal law regarding the prompt payment of wages, payment of minimum wage, or prevailing wage rates. Payroll fraud is defined as the concealment of a business’s true...
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