Wage theft

New Jersey Court Rules that Liquidated Damages Available Retroactively for Pre-2019 Wage Payment Violations

January 6, 2021 | Smith Eibeler LLC

Liquidated damages are a type of monetary compensation to which an injured party is entitled when a statute provides for this additional relief or when it is available under contract. When liquidated damages are an available remedy under statutory law, the statute will generally provide guidelines to courts to help them determine the appropriate award. Under New Jersey’s Wage Payment Law, specifically the August 6, 2019 amendments also commonly known as the Wage Theft Act, an additional amount of liquidated damages of up to 200% of the unpaid wages due are available should the plaintiff succeed in his or her claim for unpaid wages. The Wage Theft Act also extended the time plaintiffs have to bring claims against their employers from two to six years.

One question that has been litigated in the year and a half since the passing of the Wage Theft Act is whether the amendments apply retroactively to claims that arose before August 6, 2019. The Superior Court for the State of New Jersey in the Essex County vicinage just refused to dismiss a putative class action complaint filed by Werny Castro on behalf of himself and other similarly situated truck drivers, against the defendant Linden Bulk Transportation, LLC, a for-profit motor freight carrier, under the New Jersey Wage Payment Law, including the wage theft amendments. Castro claims that the trucking company purposely misclassified him and other similarly situated drivers as independent contractors rather than employees in order to avoid paying them proper wages in violation of the Wage Payment Law.

Castro’s job required him to deliver cargo from Linden’s facility to various ports in New Jersey. He claims that since August 2013, the trucking company has misclassified him and other drivers, and unlawfully required them to pay certain expenses thereby depriving them of rightfully earned wages. Specifically, Linden required drivers to pay for fuel, taxes, tolls, truck parts, insurance policies and business-related phone calls, among other items. The trucking company classified the drivers as lessors of the trucks, and itself as lessee. Castro claims, however, that the drivers in fact leased the vehicles from an affiliate of Linden and that at least one of the vehicles was even registered under Linden’s Department of Transportation registration number. In addition to control and ownership of the vehicles, Castro claims that the trucking company also exercised control over the work performed by him and the other putative plaintiffs. For instance, Linden set work schedules and distributed assignments, required the use of Linden’s shipping invoices and time verification reports, and required that the trucks be returned to and stored at Linden’s facility at the end of each shift. Linden also had the ability to terminate Castro and the other drivers, which would have left them entirely unemployed without any clients or customers, because they all relied entirely upon Linden for their work.

New Jersey Passes Employee Misclassification Laws for Workers

January 22, 2020 | Smith Eibeler LLC

Governor Phil Murphy has signed into law several bills that will significantly expand protections for New Jersey workers. The new legislation includes a package of bills that aim to protect the rights of workers who have been misclassified as independent contractors. The new law provides for penalties against employers who misclassify their workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

The punitive aspect of the new law aims to encourage employers to appropriately designate employees as such, and therefore affording them the legal protections provided to employees under various state and federal employment laws. However, this controversial bill has sparked much debate regarding the future of workers in the “gig” economy. Opponents of the law contend that the new law will create significant financial burdens on businesses who will then in turn refuse to employ these workers.

New Jersey employment law distinguishes between two types of workers: employees and independent contractors. While regular employees enjoy and have access to wage theft protections, overtime pay, workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, sick and family leave, health and safety, and anti-discrimination protections, independent contractors receive no such benefits. Historically, employers were required by law to pay tax contributions on employee’s wages only, and not those of independent contractors. This resulted in a scenario where it is enticing for employers to classify, and perhaps even misclassify, workers as independent contractors under any circumstance. The new legislation aims to combat such conduct and improve protections for misclassified workers.

New Jersey Legislature Grapples with Amending Worker Misclassification Law

November 27, 2019 | Smith Eibeler LLC

Whether a worker is afforded protection under federal and New Jersey employment laws is often determined whether they are an employee or an independent contractor. Many employment laws provide protection only to employees, with little to no protection for independent contractors. For example, employees have access to wage theft protection, overtime pay, workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, family leave laws, health and safety, and anti-discrimination protections, whereas independent contractors may not. In situations where a worker is misclassified as an independent contractor, rather than an employee, that worker can be deprived of the protections that they are entitled to under the law.

Classification of whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor has become more and more important in our going growing technological economy. The growing accessibility of technology provides a vast digital marketplace that is now at the fingertips of millions of consumers. App-based companies, such as Uber, Lyft, and Postmates have taken advantage of this accessibility and services quickly and conveniently. To accomplish this goal, these companies typically elicit services from workers on a job-by-job basis, commonly referred to as “gigs”. As this “gig” economy expands and becomes a more viable source of income for many workers, it brings to the surface questions with respect to the classification of the workers engaging in it.

As a result of the increasing frequency of worker misclassification, New Jersey organized the Task Force on Employee Misclassification to investigate and address the issue. In its July 2019 report, the Task Force found that while prominent within the “gig” economy, this misclassification extends to workers many sectors, especially those in labor-intensive and low-wage positions. In fact, Federal studies and state-level agency audits suggest that between 10 and 30 percent of employers have misclassified employees as independent contractors, a number that has grown by upwards of 40% in recent years. In addition to depriving employees of protections under the law, these employers have avoided payment of income taxes as well as contributions to social programs, such as Social Security, on the misclassified employees.

Out of Control: New Jersey Independent Contractor Misclassification Tackled by Task Force

August 21, 2019 | Smith Eibeler LLC

A recent gubernatorial task force has released a report addressing a major problem that many employees are facing across the state of New Jersey. According to the Report of Governor Murphy’s Task Force on Employee Misclassification, 12,315 employees were improperly classified as independent contractors, rather than employees, in 2018. This misclassification can cause major issues for workers by limiting their access to essential legal protections provided to New Jersey employees. There has been a growing trend of misclassification, with the number of employees misclassified as independent contractors increasing by 40% over the past decade. Unfortunately, this trend continues to create problems for workers across the State to this day, which is why Governor Murphy’s task force was so greatly needed.

Generally, in order to determine whether a worker is properly classified as an employee or an independent contractor for wage payment law and wage and hour law purposes, New Jersey courts utilize what is known as the ‘ABC Test.’ The ABC Test starts off with a presumption that a worker is an employee. An employer can rebut this presumption only if they can establish the existence of each of the following three factors:

The worker is free from control or direction in the performance of their services, both under the contract and in fact;

New Jersey Passes Landmark Wage Theft Law

August 7, 2019 | Smith Eibeler LLC

After passing both chambers of the New Jersey legislature, yesterday Acting Governor Sheila Oliver signed S1790 into law amending the New Jersey Wage Payment law. The amendments to the wage statute are long overdue and will provide employees with much needed legal protections against wage theft by employers. The new law strengthens existing wage law by providing steep penalties against employers that fail to timely pay their workers their earned wages and benefits.

Wage theft occurs when employers fail to pay employees their earned wages and benefits in a timely manner. Wage theft violations can also include failure to pay minimum wage, failure to pay overtime, employee misclassification, asking employees to work off the clock, break violations, illegal deductions and other pay related violations. Wage theft is often rampant in industries with many workers in lower-wage jobs, making them particularly vulnerable to wage discrimination and retaliation.

The amendments to the New Jersey wage statute are game-changing. They provide the much needed teeth for employees to fight back against employers who engage in wage theft. Under the new law, an employee will now be able to seek liquidated damages in an amount up to two (2) times wages owed. The new law will also allow employees to recoup reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs incurred in litigating a wage theft claim against an employer or former employer. The new provisions will assist aggrieved employees with access to competent wage theft employment lawyers to represent them and deter employers from committing future wage theft violations. The new law also changes the statute of limitations from 2 years to 6 years. The change to the statute of limitations is being interpreted by many employment lawyers to allow employees to bring a claim of wage violations for up to 6 years if the same violation occurs after its August 5, 2019 passage.