In summary
More workers are filing claims with the state alleging employers are retaliating against them for engaging in legally protected activities, such as seeking overtime pay or reporting wage theft or discrimination. The state’s waitlist for investigations and hearings is growing, and few workers have won their claims.
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In June 2020, as California was deep in the throes of the COVID pandemic, Lizzet Aguilar raised the alarm about working conditions at the Los Angeles McDonald’s where she worked.
Joined at times by her coworkers, Aguilar filed three safety complaints with the state and the county alleging that workers were forced to work without masks and that managers failed to notify them when they were exposed to the virus. The workers staged strikes over the summer outside the Boyle Heights restaurant, demanding improvements.
That September Aguilar and three coworkers were fired.
A citation from the state Labor Commissioner’s office against the business followed, along with two years of appeals. This past February the case finally came to a close: A state hearing officer ruled the workers were owed back wages and should be rehired.
The case, whose resolution the Labor Commissioner announced in April, was one of the state’s rare public crackdowns against retaliation — the act of employers firing workers, changing their schedules, cutting their hours or otherwise disciplining them for making legitimate complaints about working...
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