withholding

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With many workplaces now going on a year with remote workers, issues that were thought to be temporary blips are turning into major headaches.

Suppose your office in Stamford, Connecticut is closed and employee are allowed to work remotely.

What happens to those New York residents who are now working from home 24/7?

What about…

Short post today: If you haven’t paid attention yet to the new state Paid Leave law, you’re out of time.

Here are three things to do right now:

  1. Register with the State Authority here. This is essential; all employers need to do this (presumably by January 1 for reasons I’ll explain next.)
  2. Figure out

…

Over Thanksgiving, I did something novel (at least for me): I painted my home office space.

That, of course, led to the realization that the carpet was hopelessly outdated and, since we were at it, the light fixture was falling apart, and the desk and chair I was working from for the last 9 months…

You may recall that President Trump issued a memorandum earlier in August 2020 directing the Treasury Secretary to defer the withholding, despite and payment of the employee portion of social security tax for certain employees.

On Friday, the Secretary released a new notice on that point; however, as my colleagues explain in a new post…

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing more tweets from human resources types and mainstream reporters using the phrase “wage theft”.  Two recent examples? William Tincup (who runs the popular online DriveThruHR show that I appeared on a while ago) recently tweeted:

And The New York Times labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse yesterday tweeted:

Yes, even The New York Times Editorial Board is beginning to use the term with surprising carelessness suggesting “law enforcement officials” (a term typically reserved for police officers, not Department of Labor officials) routinely use it.

It’s time for employers to beware this phrase and fight its usage because, in my view, it’s really an attempt to turn something often unintentional, into something nefarious and intentional.

Or as Mandy Patinkin’s character in The Princess Bride said: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

What DO I mean? Well, think of the word, “theft” and most of us think of the intentional taking of something that belongs to someone else. Like your jewelry, or your iPhone. Even your company’s trade secrets.Continue Reading “Wage Theft”: The Trendy Phrase That May Not Mean What You Think It Means

In a post last week, I pointed out that New York amended its laws to allow for some deductions by employers from an employee wages.  I joked that Connecticut could do the same as some of Connecticut’s rules are a bit dated themselves.  

A nice note from a Connecticut Department of Labor official suggested…