Written by David E. Paseltiner
In our memo of February 1, 2011, we described the recently adopted New York Wage Theft Prevention Act (the “Act”). Among other things, the Act required employers to provide each employee with a written notice pertaining to pay rates and paydays at the time of hiring and on or before February 1 of each subsequent year of employment, on forms prepared by the Department of Labor. The requirement for the annual notices created an unpopular burden on employers at a time when Governor Cuomo has been promoting the large number of administrative and regulatory reforms that have been made to make New York more business friendly.
To address this issue, on December 29 Governor Cuomo signed a bill repealing the obligation to provide the annual notices (the requirement for notice at the time of hiring remains in effect). Although the bill has an effective date of 60 days from signing (and thus would become effective after the February 1, 2015 date for the next round of notices), the Governor’s approval memo accompanying the bill states that an agreed-upon chapter amendment will “accelerate the effective date of the notification rule changes in section 1 of the bill to remove the notice requirement on employers for the 2015 calendar year.”
The chapter amendment has not been signed as of this date. However, the New York Department of Labor has announced that “given the pending enactment of this chapter amendment, the Department will not require annual statements in 2015.”