Business and labor are gearing up to go head-to-head on Californians’ ballots again — this time over a consequential 20-year-old state labor law you’ve probably never heard of.

[Currently] Workers claiming labor law violations, such as wage theft, can ask the state Labor Commissioner’s Office to investigate, and either cite or sue the employer.

The Private Attorneys General Act offers another option. It lets the state outsource the suing to private attorneys, with a worker taking the place of the state as the plaintiff. If the worker wins, the private lawsuit — just like a suit brought by the state — is used to collect a payout for them and their coworkers. The state gets most of the cut, because workers using this law are suing for state penalties.

Labor groups like the law because it bulks up capacity for the state Labor Commissioner’s Office. So do the attorneys who bring these cases on behalf of workers and collect legal fees.

Business groups hate the law, saying it enriches lawyers while subjecting numerous businesses to costly suits over technical violations. A coalition of business groups qualified a ballot measure two years ago to repeal the law. The group has reported receiving $15 million for the campaign in the last month.

Today, the UCLA Labor Center and two advocacy groups issued their own report, saying that without the private lawsuits, the state’s Labor Commissioner’s Office doesn’t have the capacity to take on thousands of new complaints of wage theft.

Maybe the real problem is that the government starves entities that work in behalf of the average person and doesn't make the penalty for proven labor abuses enough to deter them from committing further illegalities. A friend of mine just won an award from her employer after two years of them making her life a living hell, and she only won it because of a state agency like this one coupled with her unwavering persistence - which was admirable, given the number of times I had to talk her off the ledge during that period.