Are you Due or Owed Unpaid Wages?
If you are owed wages or any other monies by a current or former employer, allow our attorneys to help get what is owed to you. Please complete our wage and hour intake form to get started:
Wage and Hour Intake Form
Workers of various categories can be exploited by their employers, from wait staff to craftsmen to administrators and experts. Workers frequently are unaware that they are being routinely denied thousands of dollars in wages to which they are entitled under US, New York State, and New York City regulations.
At Tully Rinckey, our attorneys know that issues of wage theft are not exclusive to one worker or one sector. Similarly, for class action suits, we understand that these cases can operate on a much grander scale than an individual lawsuit and that the stakes are much higher. At Tully Rinckey, our attorneys have handled many cases on behalf of numerous employees against large corporations and government entities.
Common Types of New York City Wage Violations
While wage violations can happen to any employee, there are a few types of employees that issues frequently appear due to the nature of their occupation. Some of the top industries include:
- Health Care: Nurses and other healthcare professionals frequently are subject to wage violations for many reasons, often unbeknownst to them. A few examples are not being paid for travel, doing unpaid training sessions, working beyond their shifts to assist their patients and misclassifications of their job category.
- Hotel and Foodservice Industry: Workers in these fields might often find their timecard records being changed or might have an illegal tipping pool, with money being misapplied or taken by their employers. Coupled with the common mistake of paying a tipped wage for duties outside of food preparation, these workers are often misclassified and paid under minimum wage for their work.
- Cleaning and Janitorial Services: Often classified as independent contractors, they can be kept from earning overtime and are often intimidated into taking less than minimum wage.
While not an exhaustive list, many workers can find themselves being denied proper wages due to employer mismanagement and misclassification. There are many federal laws in place to protect workers such as the Fair Labor Standards Act. However, while that is only limited to wage and hour protections, New York State and New York City laws go even further, providing employees with other employment rights and privileges including, equal gendered pay, right for action on unpaid commissions, independent contractor issues, misclassification of workers, and other general wage and hour matters.
Class Actions
A class-action lawsuit permits a lawyer to represent one individual or a small group of people and sue on behalf of tens or hundreds of others who have similar issues. If only one employee sues the company for a pay violation, the employer may settle quietly and continue its illegal behavior. In a class action, the corporation will not only be required to compensate its employees for the harm they have suffered, but the court will also order the company to modify its policies. A class-action lawsuit attracts the attention of both the corporation and the court. With strength in numbers, taking collective action against even the largest corporations levels the playing field.
It is important to realize when pursuing a class action though, that there must be several factors considered first, such as whether or not there are enough people affected by this issue or that the affected persons’ issue is similar enough to those in the suit to warrant a class action. The adequacy of representation is an important factor to consider. Trust that Tully Rinckey has the knowledge and experience to guide you through these challenging and complex cases.
