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The implication is that a lot of that money is wasted on lawyers.

From the study: "Since 2013, employers have been forced to pay nearly $10 billion in PAGA court case awards, but because of the class-action nature of many claims and heavy lawyer commissions, workers receive only a small portion of these awards"

A fair number of claims are guidance issues or gotcha issues. Wrong employer address on a paycheck is a crime (as it should be), but is it a $2 million dollar crime? Or could it be fixed in the next payroll cycle if a zip code was missing on an address with maybe some kind of penalty per employee for one payroll (not every paycheck).

If much of that money goes to lawyers rather than workers I think there's a good argument to be made that the lawyers were the ones winning.