You have legal rights to pay from your employer that you may not know about.
We can help you enforce your legal rights to wages at no out-of-pocket cost to you.
Employers with workers in Washington, D.C., violate federal law and/or District of Columbia law when they:
- Fail to pay overtime at time-and-a-half rates to any non-management worker who works more than 40 hours in a week.
- Chisel their employees by withholding money from paychecks without a good legal reason.
- Refuse to pay at least the federal minimum wage.
- Try to pay employees in “barter” – trading goods and services for an employee’s work, instead of money.
- Refuse to pay an employee any money for working duties.
- Fail to pay a final paycheck to a discharged employee on the next business day (for most employees).
- Fail to pay a final paycheck to an employee who quits, in the next regular paycheck.
- Withhold money from a final paycheck because the employee hasn’t turned in employer property (keys, uniforms, equipment, etc.).
All these actions are illegal and give you rights to get money from the employer.
You also have rights against retaliation. If you’re fired for a trumped-up reason after you file a wage claim against your employer, you can sue the employer for retaliation.
What if you “agreed” to something that you now know violates your legal rights? It doesn’t matter. You cannot sign away your legal rights to fair pay under the law! So even if the employer got you to agree to work “off the clock” or for pay below the minimum wage, or some other kind of illegal pay arrangement, you can still enforce your rights and collect money.
Your legal rights if your employer owes you money – regular pay or overtime or final paycheck — include:
- You can sue in federal or state court for all wages owed.
- The employer has to pay “liquidated damages” on top of the amount owed. So you can get paid in a lawsuit as much as double the amount of the unpaid wages.
- The employer also has to pay a fair attorney’s fee to your attorney, plus court costs, so it doesn’t cost you anything to have your own attorney.
Why you need a lawyer for a claim for back pay:
The laws are intricate and technical. You can lose your rights if you don’t comply with deadlines and other filing requirements.
For most wage claims, you have two years to file suit in court, sometimes three years if you can prove the employer’s violation was “willful.”
Our lead attorney: John F. Kennedy has two decades of experience enforcing the legal rights of employees to their rights under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the D.C. Payment and Collection of Wages Act, D.C. Code 32-1301 et seq.
