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Shannon Liss-Riordan on Jobs
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Aggressively fight wage theft and worker misclassification
As Attorney General, Shannon will pursue aggressive, systemic enforcement of wage laws to fight wage theft and worker misclassification; establish a fund to ensure workers with wage theft claims get paid right away;
and pursue debarment of companies that have repeatedly engaged in wage theft to ensure they are not awarded public contracts.
Source: Mass. 2022 Attorney General press release ShannonForAG.com
, Sep 6, 2022
Use bully pulpit to trumpet the importance of unions
Shannon will continue to hold "gig economy" companies like Uber, Lyft, and others accountable for misclassifying their workers as independent contractors, an important fight she started more than a decade ago. She will use every tool available
to expand workers' ability to organize and collectively bargain, as well as the bully pulpit of the Attorney General's Office to trumpet the importance of unions.
Source: Mass. 2022 Attorney General press release ShannonForAG.com
, Sep 6, 2022
Protect tipped workers' wages
Since the very beginning of her legal career, Shannon has challenged the status quo of corporations taking advantage of workers. Her groundbreaking lawsuits not only protected peoples' wages,
but reshaped entire industries, from food services to the cleaning and trucking industries.In her early cases, Shannon represented groups of restaurant servers whose employers were taking their tips.
She won a string of these cases and remade the law in Massachusetts protecting tipped workers. These cases fueled her passion for fairness. Since then, Shannon has brought and won hundreds of cases representing tipped workers, employees misclassified
as independent contractors, and low wage workers, forcing massive companies like Starbucks, FedEx, Harvard University, and American Airlines to rewrite their policies and pay employees what they deserve.
Source: 2020 Mass. Senate campaign website, ShannonForSenate.com
, Jan 1, 2020
Raise the minimum wage; eliminate the sub-minimum wage
Shannon Liss-Riordan testified before a Massachusetts legislative committee in support of a bill that would eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. "It is unfair that workers have to depend on the whims of their customers for their
livelihood," Liss-Riordan said.The Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development held a hearing on H.1617, a bill that would gradually require tipped workers be paid the same minimum wage as any other worker. Today, tipped workers must be paid
$4.35 an hour by their employer. Tipped workers are supposed to make up the difference between that and the state minimum wage of $12 an hour through tips.
"Having tipped workers be dependent on customers for most of their livelihood, it puts
workers at risk for sexual harassment, for discrimination," Liss-Riordan said. "The only way we can really solve this is to put an end to the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers," she said.
Source: Springfield Republican on Massachusetts voting record H.1617
, Jun 18, 2019
Page last updated: Sep 17, 2022; copyright 1999-2022 Jesse Gordon and OnTheIssues.org