At our New York City law firm, we advise employers about compliance with federal, state and local wage-and-hour laws involving payroll issues like overtime, minimum wage, classification of employees and similar issues. Our attorneys provide guidance in drafting employee handbooks and creating policies and procedures that meet these kinds of legal requirements.
Likewise, we provide employees with advice about their potential legal remedies for wage-and-hour violations.
A local example
Federal authorities found in September that a Long Island City gas station violated wage-and-hour requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The FLSA is the main federal law that governs overtime, minimum wage and similar employee protections.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, or WHD, conducted an investigation and found seven employees were entitled to $129,722 in back wages, plus an equal amount of “liquidated damages,” meaning a payment set in amount by the FLSA that operates basically as a penalty for the violations. Normally after working 40 hours in a week, additional time worked must be at a rate of time and a half, but the employer instead paid the seven workers at their regular wage rates for overtime work.
The WHD found the employer had these additional FLSA violations:
- Failure to pay minimum wage when it paid only $6 per hour to an attendant who worked more than full time
- Interference with WHD investigators by telling employees to “mislead and provide false information”
- Violation of records requirements involving payroll, time worked and payments in cash
In addition to the damages and back wages paid to the employees, the WHD also assessed a penalty of $2,706.
