Earlier this month, the Governor of the State of New York, Kathy Hochul, approved amendments that establish the amount of damages recoverable for weekly pay violations. The amendments provide for a fraction of the damages that plaintiffs have been seeking for such violations.
The changes to the law are not just effective immediately, but also retroactive, which means they apply to currently pending claims.
New York’s pay frequency law, which can be found at section 191 of the New York Labor Law (NYLL), generally requires private employers to pay a “manual worker” not less frequently than weekly and an “other worker” no less frequently than twice a month.
New York’s pay frequency law has been around for over a century, but only recently started to become a popular claim for plaintiffs to assert in court.
In 2019, a New York intermediate appellate court (from our perspective, mistakenly) tied the pay frequency law (NYLL section 191) to a separate section of the NYLL that provides, in part, for a private right of action and 100 percent liquidated damages for underpaid wages (NYLL section 198). That decision, Vega v. CM & Associates Construction Management, LLC, opened the floodgates to lawsuits in New York federal and state courts for pay frequency claims as plaintiffs looked to Vega to insist they could pursue such claims in court and recover the equivalent of all untimely...
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