Issue Paper: Weekly Pay

MAINTAIN REQUIREMENT FOR WEEKLY PAY

Rhode Island law presently requires that employers pay workers in the private sector on a weekly basis.  Efforts to change this law and allow employers to pay workers on a bi-weekly basis have come before the General Assembly for several years.

Passage of legislation that permits bi-weekly pay would be an economic injustice to the working people of our state.  Many employers, especially larger ones, would be able to make interest income by holding workers' wages an extra week.  Additionally, in the case of bankruptcies, the workers could be owed at least an extra week of wages.  Unfortunately, under the bankruptcy laws of our state and nation, workers must wait until all taxes and secured creditors are paid before they receive the wages for the hours they worked.

Although dressed up in economic development clothing for public relations purposes, this is at best a convenience issue for some big corporations at the expense of the workers.  Our organization has been and remains committed to working on real economic development issues with government and business leaders.  This issue is both irrelevant and insignificant to the economic development of our state.

AFL-CIO POSITION

The Rhode Island AFL-CIO vigorously opposes repeal of the present law on this issue.  For workers, there is already too much week left at the end of their pay.