New York Employment and Wage Law Attorney

Unfair Wages

Employers knowingly or unknowingly fail to pay employees what they deserve. There are many different ways employers have found to deceive employees and pay them less than they deserve. Some of the most common tactics are:

• Failing to pay employees time and a half for overtime work
• Paying an employee a salary to hide overtime hours
• Improperly classifying employees as managers or independent contractors
• Forcing employees to work before or after they are on the clock
• Paying less than minimum wage – federal and state
• Subtracting hours for mistakes made
• Not calculating differential pay (e.g. nighttime differential)

If any of these unfair practices have been used against you, contact us today so we can help you recover the money you are owed. At Rheingold Giuffra Ruffo Plotkin & Hellman LLP, we handle a wide range of cases. We help people from New York and across the nation who have been cheated of fair wages.

Although the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, the current NY State minimum wage is $8.75 an hour. Make sure you have been getting paid the required minimum wage as of the start of the year.

Certain businesses are worse than others when it comes time to pay fair wages. Restaurants are particularly abusive of employees, since employee pay involves tips directly from the customer. In addition to the unfair practices listed above, restaurant employees should keep in mind:

• Forced tip sharing with the entire restaurant staff or with employees not entitled to tip pooling may be against NY law
• Tipped employees must be paid extra by their employers if they are not making minimum wage
• Time used for “Prep” and “Cleanup” work must be calculated into the hours you work
• Overtime for Tipped Employees needs to be calculated a special way. With a tip credit the pay for hours less than forty is $5 an hour, but overtime is not $7.50 an hour, it is properly $8.625.

Contact Us for a Free Case Evaluation

Have you or someone close to you been deprived of fair wages? Please contact us today online or by telephone to speak with an experienced New York lawyer. Our law office is conveniently located in a brownstone in Midtown Manhattan located at 113 East 37th Street.