More details to this question:
I work for a family company and my boss has decided to keep 120 dollars worth of my money that I already worked for as a "punishment" for not turning my time in daily. I turned in my completed excel spreadsheet for all time worked as per usual, but has tried to make me start emailing him daily my hours as well as the excel sheet at the end of the pay period. Can he keep my money? I worked 83 hours that two week period and he only payed me 73 hours. He didn't even put 83 hours and deducted 10 hours as a punishment. He just made me work 10 free hours. I can understand him punishing me by giving me less hours or firing me, but he can't keep 10 hours of my pay, right? Thanks! Isaac
1 ANSWER
Labor and Employment Attorney serving Atlanta, GA
2 Awards
Isaac,
If your employer is large enough to be covered by the wage-hour laws (most are), and if it is not paying you for all the time you worked, he is violating the wage hour laws. Also, if you are working more than 40 hours in a 7 day work week, the employer owes you 150% of your hourly rate for each hour or part of hour that you worked above the 40 hour maximum. In either event you can sue the employer in federal court and you can recover the amount of money that he should have paid you (but didn't) plus an amount equal to that first amount. The additional amount is a penalty called "liquidated damages." What you have described that your employer did above appears to be clear violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. If the employer has been doing the same thing in terms of failing to pay you all of your wages, or failing to pay you overtime for a long time, you can recover damages for all unpaid wages and overtime that you should have received, going back as far as 3 years.
Our firm (and many others) accept such cases on a contingent fee basis meaning that we collect our fees from the employer at the end of the case. I hope this information is helpful to you.
Michael A. Caldwell
404-979-3154
Answered on Feb 04th, 2014 at 6:36 PM