New Jersey Lawyers BlogNew Jersey Adds to Its Already Strong Pro-Employee Legislation With New Wage Theft Act
New Jersey passed the Wage Theft Act on August 6, 2019. It is being viewed as one of the strongest and broadest wage theft laws in the nation, and rightly so. The New Jersey Wage Theft Act increases penalties that employers may be subject to under New Jersey’s Wage and Hour Law with the addition of a liquidated damages provision and further protections for employees who bring retaliation claims. The New Jersey Wage Theft Act also expands the employers who may be liable for employee claims by making both employers and labor contractors jointly and severally liable for violations and prohibiting waivers regarding joint and several liability.
What is Wage Theft?
Wage theft can come in a variety of different forms but boils down to circumstances where an employer does not pay an employee the amount he is owed. The following are a few examples where an employee may have a claim for wage theft: (1) an employee is not getting paid for the full amount of hours worked; (2) a non-exempt employee is not be getting paid overtime wage rates for hours he has worked in excess of 40 hours for a week; (3) an employee’s paycheck from his employer bounces; and (4) an employer deducts time out of an employee’s paycheck for breaks which the employee never took. As you can see from these examples, wage theft is not limited to any one industry or job.