Bruh – boss ain’t paying you? Generally, yes you may sue an employer for not paying you correctly – but. Employees work hard and deserve to be paid correctly, and on time. It sucks when an employee works hard, and long hours only to be paid incorrectly while the boss is driving a Lambo or Benz. As an employment attorney, employees frequently ask me, “Can I sue my employer for not paying me correctly.” The answer has many shades of gray.
You work hard for your boss to make money, and you shouldn’t have to chase after the money you earned. In America, most workers depend on the biweekly paycheck to pay rent and care for their families. Living paycheck to paycheck and working hard as much as they can. It is unacceptable when an employer does not pay their worker. It is illegal for an employer to withhold their workers’ income. It is wage theft under both federal and state laws of employment. YES, you can sue a company for not paying you. In fact, many employees contact me learn that they are also owed money for missed rest break and lunch break breaks. Please call me; I got your back.
Related blog:
Before pursuing a case in court for your employer not paying you correctly, it is important to know which type of case to approach first and what evidence you will need. For example, what type of wage theft did your employer commit? There are different types of wage violations and theft, such as; violations in terms of minimum wage and overtime pay, requiring workers to work off the clock, and record-keeping violations.
Workers have every right to sue employers if they fail to pay them the minimum wage that is mandated by federal law. There is minimum wage pay that has been set by the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) and it must be paid to workers. And even though federal laws have mandated a certain minimum wage, some states have mandated an even higher minimum wage.
An employer can also fail to pay correctly by illegally deducting expenses from a worker’s paycheck when the law does not allow them to do so. Hence it is important to keep an eye on deducted money from your paycheck.
A worker can also sue their employer when they do not pay them overtime. An employer is not paying correctly if they deny their workers overtime pay as required by both state and federal laws. If an employee works more than 40 hours in a work week (7 days), federal and state laws require employers to pay overtime. When an employee makes overtime pay, it is one and a half times what they regularly get paid. A worker may be making $12 an hour, but if they work overtime, they’d be paid $18 an hour for every hour worked after working 40 hours.
It is important to note that some employees such as supervisors or managers get paid a salary instead of hourly pay. Because of this, these employees are not eligible to be paid for overtime work.
FLSA laws state that overtime pay cannot be waived by an employer nor an employee. Most of the time when an employer commits violations in overtime pay is for not classifying their worker’s job title correctly, for falsifying records in timekeeping and working locations, mistakes in calculations of working hours, and changing time clock records or undercounting hours that employees worked.
Employees can sue employers for requiring them to do work before they actually clock in or after they clock out for work. The employer would not only be not paying correctly, but they’d also be violating state and FLSA laws. If they are illegally forcing employees to work off the clock, they can also be liable if employees get injured while doing so. Employers could face both wage theft and personal injury claims against them.
Working off the clock can look like:
An employer can be sued for not paying correctly when their fail to organize and/or maintain time records (wages, working hours, compensations, etc..) accurately. The U.S. Department of Labor requires that all employers do this, and if employers deny their employees their deserving pay, they can face record-keeping violation claims.
WHD (Wage and Hour Division) posters from the U.S. Department of Labor are required to be put up in the workplace to inform employees of all the records that their employer is required to keep. Such records include the hours worked by employee, the total number of hours to be put in by employees per work week, and the hourly pay rate for employees.
When an employee files a wage claim against an employer, then they cannot be terminated by their employer for doing so. But before hiring an employment lawyer or filing a claim or getting the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) involved, it is important for the employee to first try and communicate with their employer regarding the issue. An employer might have miscalculated or made a mistake in their records which could be fixed.
But if an employer does not agree on a solution or even a settlement for the wage theft issue, then the employee should inform the federal agency EEOC regarding the issue by filing a claim. An employee would have a phone interview with an EEOC representative to have the right to file a claim with the EEOC. Contacting the WHD (Wage and Hour Division) with the U.S. Department of Labor is also an option.
When an employee sues employer for not paying correctly, then the judicial system allows employees/plaintiffs the right to seek monetary damages that can include interest pay, back pay, punitive and compensatory damages.
Interest/Liquidated Damages: Under state laws, an employee can sue their employer for not paying wages correctly, this goes as well for unpaid wages and the interests charged. Depending on the case, employees could also see liquidated damages instead of interest pay.
An employee can suspect that their employer is not paying correctly if their paycheck does not seem right. Employees cannot assume that their employer is always right when it comes to paying correctly, most employers end up underpaying their employees either by accident or on purpose. Employees could be getting paid less than the minimum wage or be cheated out of other wages or compensations.
Things to look out for include:
Once an employee has determined that their paycheck/pay-stub is incorrect and that their employer is not paying correctly, there are steps they can take:
