Did your employer fail to pay you minimum wages and/or time and one-half overtime wages as required by law?
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and local New York Labor Laws ("NYLL"), non-exempt employees are entitled to minimum wages for all hours worked, and overtime compensation at rates not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay for hours worked in excess of forty hours per workweek.
Despite the FLSA and the applicable NYLL, employers often try to avoid paying their employees properly. One of the many ways this is done is by misclassifying an employee as "exempt."
If you believe you are owed wages, please contact us. If you worked more than forty hours in a workweek and did not receive overtime premium pay for hours worked over forty, we would like to speak with you.
Are you owed tips?
If you are working as a tipped employee, a server, waiter, bartender or busboy, your employer could be illegally withholding your owed wages.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), when an employee is paid less than minimum wage there cannot be any arrangement between the employer and the tipped employee whereby any part of the tip received becomes the property of the employer. In other words, an employer is not allowed to retain a portion of your tips. If an employer fails to adhere to the FLSA, you may be entitled to minimum wages for all hours worked.
Additionally, the New York Department of Labor (NYDL) issued new regulations on tipping that went into effect on January 2, 2011. The regulations for the first time regulate the appropriation of tips. Specifically, there are new rules for tip-pooling. The rules allow gratuities to be combined in a pool to be divided by all the staff members or collected by individual servers who in turn give a portion to members of the team. The NYDL requires employers to keep records of tip pools and shares.
If you believe you are owed tips, please contact us.
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