Opinion

Organizing tool or commercial property owner shakedown?

Imagine that you're fortunate enough to have a gardener and that she has hired someone to help her take care of your yard. Now suppose that the helper has a dispute with the gardener over how much he was paid. Regardless of whether the helper is right or wrong, do you think that he should be able to file a lien against your home?

This is what will happen to commercial property owners throughout California if the Wage Theft Recovery Act, a bill working its way through the Legislature, becomes law.

According to its sponsors, Assembly Bill 2416 is designed to address the problem of uncollectible judgments obtained by employees with valid wage claims. An insolvent or unscrupulous employer can disappear during the long interval between the time an employee files a claim with the state labor commissioner's office and the time that the claim is resolved, leaving the aggrieved employee with no way to collect.

AB2416's solution is to give the employee the right to protect his or her claim by filing a no-questions-asked, "pre-judgment" lien against the employer's property, or against the property where the employee performed "property services work," even if not owned by the employer. Until the wage dispute is resolved, the employer or property owner cannot easily sell or finance its property.

The person filing a lien could be, but need not be, the property owner's employee. The person might be an employee of a janitorial service hired by a tenant to clean the inside of the tenant's office. It makes no difference if the property owner knows the individual filing the lien, or has any knowledge of the work he or she did. A complete stranger can tie up the building, and tarnish the owner's reputation, by involving the property owner in a wage dispute for which the owner has no responsibility.

The bill is sponsored by a labor organization, which says it wants to protect workers. That might be true, but the union's primary motive appears to be different: It wants to create an organizing tool.

How else can one explain the fact that buried in the body of AB2416 is a cryptic provision that invalidates liens for "labor performed under a valid collective bargaining agreement"? In other words, AB2416 would only benefit employees who are not members of a union. Why would a California union work so hard to pass a bill that benefits nonunion employees?

The answer, I believe, is that the real intent is to compel employers and property owners to seek the safe harbor of union contracts. The message from organized labor to employers and property owners will be clear: "Deal with us, Mr. Employer, or force your tenants to deal with us, Ms. Landlord, and we'll make sure that your employees, or your tenant's employees, or your tenant's vendor's employees won't slap drive-by liens against your property." That's not employee protection; that's a protection racket.

Justice demands that employees with valid wage claims be compensated, but the Wage Theft Recovery Act is not a just remedy. It's blackmail.