-California lawmakers are proposing bills to address the long waits and low payouts experienced by workers who claim their employers have shorted them on wages.

Senate Bill 310 by Senator Scott Wiener would allow workers to recoup more money through private lawsuits instead of filing claims through a heavily delayed system at the Labor Commissioner's office.

In a 2022 series, CalMatters reported that it took the understaffed office an average of 505 days to decide on workers' wage theft claims.

That's far longer than the 135 days required by state law.

That wait time has since soared to more than 850 days, according to a state audit published last year.

-The audit report identified numerous issues at the Commissioner's office.

A backlog of 47,000 claims of wage theft, 33,000 claims have been part of the backlog for at least three years.

-Workers claiming wage theft can file private lawsuits or file a claim with the state Labor Commissioner's office.

SB 310 would allow workers filing private lawsuits to claim not only their lost wages but also civil penalties, so they could bypass the Labor Commissioner's office, which gets over 30,000 claims a year.

The proposal is likely to receive pushback.

The California Chamber of Commerce wrote in 2023 that states should process wage claims faster but should not shift more enforcement to private attorneys.

Meanwhile, another bill, SB 261 by Senator Aisha Wahab, would require the Labor Commissioner's office to publicly post all its decisions against employers who have not yet paid claims.

It would also allow the office to seek more fines against employers who do not pay within six months.

In its 2022 series, CalMatters found that even after workers win their claims, only about one in seven judgments are paid.

For CalMatters, I'm Jeannie Kwong.