Bill > SB6058

This bill amends existing Washington state law to grant the Department of Labor and Industries more discretion in wage enforcement actions, allowing them to investigate violations of wage laws and order the payment of all amounts owed to workers, including interest, and to collect these amounts. Importantly, the department can now choose which wage complaints to investigate based on a publicly available prioritization process that considers factors like harm to the employee and the severity of the complaint, and they have a three-year lookback period for calculating owed wages and interest. The bill also clarifies that the statute of limitations for civil actions is paused once a wage complaint is filed with the department, and it modifies penalties for willful violations, allowing for waiver or reduction of civil penalties if employers promptly pay owed wages and interest.