I just saw this on Del. David Englin's Twitter feed and couldn't believe my eyes.voted against a bill that would cause workers to pay ATM fees to access their own wages. It died yesterday, came back, and passed today.Wait a minute, seriously? There's a bill that makes you pay ATM fees to access your own wages? Is this the bill (by Republican Thomas Norment)? Here's the language:
...Authorizes employers to pay wages and salaries to an employee hired after January 1, 2010, by credit to a prepaid debit card or card account, without the employee's affirmative consent...Currently, payment via prepaid debit card or card account requires the affirmative consent of the employeeWhat on earth? This thing passed?
UPDATE: If it is Tommy Norment, VPAP reports that his top donor in 2007-2008 is the Virginia Banker's Association ($18,359).
UPDATE #2: David Englin confirms that this is, indeed, the bill. He writes:
Currently, with the consent of the employee, an employer can pay a
person via a debit card. This bill has the state imposing that on certain employees without their consent. The bill gives the employee one free withdrawal of funds per pay period, but doesn't define whether a pay period is one week, two weeks, four weeks, etc. If you get paid $2000 per month, you either have to walk around with $2000 in cash for a month, or you have to make multiple withdrawals and pay withdrawal fees. Moreover, as Chris Saxman pointed out, there's nothing in the bill to stop a debit card provider from giving an employer some kind of financial incentive to impose this on employees. Furthermore, there are no security provisions in the bill, so if you lose your debit card, you could be losing your entire pay period's worth of pay.
Supporters argue that you can use the debit card directly to pay for good and services. However, not all stores take credit cards, especially in poorer, rural areas.
Twitter forces one to cut to the core of the issue, which is that it "would cause workers to pay ATM fees to access their own wages."
