Opinion ID: 4540558
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Moving Stipend

Text: We start with the moving stipend. This was a $2,000 lump sum promised to Mr. Sivaraman as an enticement to accept Mr. Guizzetti’s offer of employment. While it was ostensibly offered to defray the costs of moving, the amount was not dependent upon any expenses actually being incurred; that is, Mr. Sivaraman could have spent no money whatsoever to relocate, and he still would have been entitled to this $2,000 lump sum simply for accepting the offer of employment and starting his job. For that reason, the stipend might just as easily be referred to as a signing bonus, and bonuses are expressly contemplated as wages under the WPCL, D.C. Code § 32-1301(3) (“The term ‘wages’ includes a . . . Bonus[.]”). It could also be fairly categorized as a fringe benefit, another type of compensation which is expressly contemplated as wages under the act (at least when it is to be paid in cash, as here), D.C. Code § 32-1301(3)(C). See also Jensen v. Fremont Motors Cody, Inc., 58 P.3d 322, 330 n.3 (Wyo. 2002) (“We have held that relocation benefits that are promised to an employee as a fringe benefit qualify as wages.” (citing NL Indus., Inc. v. Dill, 769 P.2d 920 (Wyo. 1989))). 14 Even if the terms “bonus” and “fringe benefit” were interpreted more narrowly, the moving stipend would nonetheless fit within the statute’s residual clause providing that “[o]ther remuneration promised or owed” also constitutes wages. See D.C. Code § 32-1301(3)(E). “Where general words follow specific words in a statutory enumeration, the general words are construed to embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects enumerated by the preceding specific words.” Edwards v. United States, 583 A.2d 661, 664 (D.C. 1990) (footnote omitted) (discussing ejusdem generis canon). The $2,000 moving stipend is, at the very least, similar in nature to a bonus or a fringe benefit paid in cash: they are each net monetary benefits conferred on an employee by reason of her employment. We can thus comfortably say the moving stipend fits within this residual clause. In concluding otherwise, the trial court, focusing on the same “[o]ther remuneration” residual clause, D.C. Code § 32-1301(3)(E), relied upon one particular dictionary definition of remuneration, taken from an unspecified internet source, which provided that remuneration “is money paid for work or a service.” That may well be one particularly narrow definition of the word, but it is just as susceptible to more sweeping definitions that would include the moving stipend (or, for that matter, expense reimbursements). See, e.g., WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 1921 (2002) (defining “remunerate” as “to pay an 15 equivalent to (a person) for a service, loss, or expense” (emphasis added)). The word remuneration—like the word compensation, which also appears in the statutory definition of wages—neither plainly includes nor excludes the moving stipend here. A survey of dictionaries does not advance the ball in either direction. A recent amendment to D.C. Code § 32-1301, however, makes clear that the D.C. Council has discarded the narrow interpretation advanced by the trial court. Until recently, the WPCL had defined wages in the same manner as the trial court, as “monetary compensation after lawful deductions, owed by an employer for labor or services rendered, whether the amount is determined on a time, task, piece, commission, or other basis of calculation.” D.C. Code § 32-1301(3) (2012 Repl.) (emphasis added). In 2013, mere months before the start of Mr. Sivaraman’s employment at G&A, the D.C. Council jettisoned this once-restrictive definition when it passed the Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act of 2013, 60 D.C. Reg. 12472, §§ 2061-64. That Act altered the definition of wages by deleting the restrictive “for labor or services rendered” language and replacing it with a host of monetary benefits that are, at least sometimes, not directly tied to labor or services 16 rendered, including the “[o]ther remuneration” residual clause.9 Id. at § 2062 (codified as amended at D.C. Code § 32-1301(3) (2019 Repl.)) (including “[b]onus,” “[c]ommission,” “[f]ringe benefits,” and “[o]ther remuneration”).10 Where the legislature “amends or reenacts a provision, a significant change in language is presumed to entail a change in meaning.” Arangure v. Whitaker, 911 F.3d 333, 341 (6th Cir. 2018). The trial court’s interpretation of wages is incompatible with these 2013 amendments supplanting the “for labor or services rendered” restriction with broader categories of wages that fall outside those bounds. Based on the text and enactment history of this provision, we conclude that the moving stipend qualifies as wages. 9 The 2013 amendment also added the word “all” before “monetary compensation,” further indicating a broadening of the definition of wages to include things beyond traditional salary. 10 Bonuses frequently are not tied to any labor or services rendered, but instead to some other benchmark, like signing a contract of employment. See, e.g., Molock v. Whole Foods Mkt. Grp., Inc., 317 F. Supp. 3d 1, 3 (D.D.C. 2018) (describing bonuses awarded under a “Gainsharing program” to “store employees whose departments came in under budget”). 17