Unpaid Wages

Most employees work hard to earn their salary and other benefits. They should not be deprived of the money they earned.

Unfortunately, employers do not always pay their employees all of the compensation they earned. At Rabner Baumgart Ben-Asher & Nirenberg, P.C., our employment lawyers work hard to recover the unpaid salary, bonuses, commissions, severance pay and other compensation that our clients earned but did not receive.

Perhaps the most common forms of unpaid compensation are salary and hourly wages. Underpaying your wages, or even just paying them late, violates your legal rights. That is true whether your employer did so because it made an oversight or miscalculation, is having financial difficulties, is engaging in intentional wage theft, or for some other reason.

In most instances, you would have a breach of contract claim against your employer to recover your unpaid compensation. In New Jersey, you might also have a claim under the Wage Payment Law ("WPL"). In addition, if your employer is not paying you at least the legally required minimum wage, then you also may have a claim under a wage and hour law such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law, and the New York Minimum Wage Law. Each of those laws have provisions allowing employees to recover not only their unpaid minimum wage, but also liquidated damages and attorney’s fees.

If you have not been paid all of your wages, then we welcome you to contact us online or to call us at (201) 777-2250 to schedule a consultation with one of our New Jersey unpaid wage attorneys.

Similarly, employers sometimes fail to pay their employees the bonuses they earned. Typically, claims for bonuses are governed by contract law. If you have done everything necessary to be entitled to receive your bonus under your employment contract or your company’s bonus policy, but your employer failed to pay it to you, then you may have a legal claim.

Notably, employers frequently have special requirements before an employee is entitled to receive their bonus. For instances, some policies make it clear you will not receive a bonus unless you remain employed when bonuses are paid out, which often can be months later. Likewise, while some bonuses are based on a formula, others are discretionary which can give the employer a lot of leeway to choose to pay you a smaller bonus or even no bonus at all.

Employers cannot engage in unlawful discrimination or retaliation when setting the amount of your bonus. For example, it would be a violation of your employment law rights if your employer gave you a lower bonus based on your age, color, disability, gender, marital status, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sexual orientation, ancestry, or veteran or military status.

Commissions are a form of compensation that employers frequently miscalculate. For example, they often retroactively change commission formulas, misinterpret their own commission plans, pay the commission to someone other than the employee who was responsible for the sale, or find other ways to deprive employees of the full commission they earned.

Our firm’s New Jersey unpaid wage lawyers have substantial experience handling claims for underpaid and unpaid commissions on behalf of both employees and independent sales representatives.

Severance pay is yet another form of compensation that employers sometimes fail to pay. Severance pay is money you earn by working for a company that becomes payable to you only if you lose your job for one of the reasons specified in the severance pay policy. For example, at some companies you might be entitled to severance pay if you lose your job because your position was eliminated as part of a merger, job restructuring, or reduction in force.

When an employer has a severance pay policy, or an employee has a severance pay provision in their employment contract, then the employer is required to follow that policy or agreement. Our New Jersey unpaid wage attorneys can help ensure you receive the severance pay you earned.

If your employer has not paid you all of the salary, wages, commission, bonus, severance pay or other compensation that you earned, then your legal rights have been violated. Please feel free to call us at (201) 777-2250 to learn how our employment lawyers can help enforce your rights.