Cuyahoga County Council Considering Legislation to Stop Doing Business With Companies That Commit Wage Theft

Cuyahoga County Council on Tuesday introduced legislation to stop the county from working with companies that commit wage theft.

Sponsored by members Patrick Kelly, Dale Miller, Martin Sweeney, Chery Stephens, Scott Tuma, Meredith Turner and Sunny Simon, the ordinance would prohibit the county from entering into contracts with companies with histories of wage theft within the last seven years, and debar contractors committing wage theft for three to five years, depending on the offense.

A similar ordinance passed in the Cleveland City Council in December 2022, and cities like Columbus and Cincinnati have passed wage theft legislation in recent years.

“We passed wage theft legislation in the city of Cleveland because we stand with workers and we’re absolutely here today because we know you all stand with workers, too,” said Cleveland City Council member Rebecca Maurer. “We know that wage theft is already illegal in the state of Ohio, but it is still the largest type of property theft that happens throughout our society. There are more wages stolen from workers than all of the burglaries, break-ins and robberies that you hear about combined.”

Members of Guardians for Fair Work, a local grassroots coalition of more than thirty community and labor organizations advocating pro-worker policies who prodded the Cleveland legislation, came out to Tuesday night's meeting in support.

“This ordinance would provide Cuyahoga County with an enforcement mechanism against illegal behavior that costs American workers $15 billion each year,” said Chris Martin, a proponent of the legislation and chair of Clevelanders for Public Transit. “And it’s not just workers who lose out due to wage theft. In fact, Cuyahoga County’s budget is starved of critical tax revenue while the most responsible businesses are undercut by competitors that openly flout the law.”

Common forms of wage theft include illegal tip deductions, minimum wage violations and failure to pay one and a half times the hourly base rate for overtime pay.

An estimated 900,000 Ohio workers are misclassified annually, which costs the state roughly $790 million in lost unemployment compensation payments, workers’ compensation premiums, and state income taxes, according to the Ohio Attorney General office.

And an analysis from Policy Matters Ohio found that employers steal from roughly 213,000 workers every year by paying them less than the minimum wage.

“[The legislation] means that the county would make sure that it does not partner and give money to employers who steal from their workers,” said Maurer. “The city is implementing our law, we're excited to implement it and we're even more excited to partner with other municipalities in Cuyahoga County and the County overall to make sure that we hold employers accountable evenly across the region.”

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