Reminder to New York Employers: Wage Theft Prevention Act Takes Effect January 1, 2012

Under the Wage Theft Prevention Act (WTPA), all New York employers, other than governmental agencies, must give annual written notice regarding wages to, and obtain a written acknowledgement from, employees at the time of hiring (before any work is performed) and between January 1 and February 1 of each year.   The notice must contain the following information: 

• the employee's rate or rates of pay (including hourly rate and overtime rate of pay for employees who are not exempt from overtime);
• whether paid by the hour, shift, day, week, salary, piece, commission or other;
• whether the employer intends to claim any allowances as part of the minimum wage, including tip, meal or lodging allowances; 
• the regular pay day;
• the name of the employer and any "doing business as" names;
• the physical address of the employer's main office or principal place of business, and a mailing address if different; and
• the telephone number of the employer.

The notices must be provided to employees in English and in the employee's primary language as identified by each employee, and the acknowledgement must contain an affirmation by the employee that he or she accurately identified his or her primary language to the employer and that the notice was provided in the language so identified or otherwise complied with Section 195 of the Labor Law. The employer must keep the signed acknowledgement for six years.

In addition, the wage statement (pay stub) must also now include the following information pertaining to employee’s regular and overtime hours and other information.  All records must be maintained for six years.

Bottom Line:  Begin preparing notices now for distribution on January 1;

Review your workforce to determine the languages other than English that you will need to have on hand for your employees.  Dual-language templates are currently available in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Haitian Creole, Polish, and Russian on the New York State DOL website.  If the employee identifies a primary language other than one of these six, the employer may provide the Notice in English only.    

Templates of all WTPA are available on the NewYork State DOL website. 

Please contact me if you'd like additional information about these requirements.