If you are a resident of California this will be especially of interest to you as it has to do with California labor laws.  Other states may have similar laws and it should be easy to find out just by checking our their labor department’s website.

Anyway, I recently quit my job at the nation’s largest copy and print center.  I’m not going to name them by name but I’ll say this, there was a great parody of them that Dave Chappelle did on the very first episode of Chappelle’s Show.  So back in December I gave notice 10 days ahead of my December 16th last day.  On my last day I said my goodbye’s to everyone and felt kinda crappy yet happy at the same time.  Crappy because I made some really great friends there and hate to say goodbye.  Happy of course because I left that place.  Honestly it was a good company to work for (not because of the money, I can assure you that, but because of the people) until they were bought out by umm…  that shipping company.

imageIt has gotten more and more corporate and the company seems to award drone like behavior instead of actual merit.  The people that work their asses off were being taken advantage of regularly in my store and everyone knew it.  Hell, it is a common occurance that people work off the clock or clock out for their lunch break and continue to work.  All of which is illegal.  So after a while of seeing how the tide was changing and getting screwed by having my position change duties on a regular basis without me having any say in the matter I decided I was going to get out while the getting was still good.  By this time many of my good friends had either transferred out of my store to another store where they were less susceptible to some of these changes and some, like me, just simply left the company out of disgust.  Too bad too since quite a few were longtime employees who knew just about every part of the store inside and out.  For a lot of them it was that the company decided that they didn’t want to promote these workers any more since they were at the top of their pay scale so they made it increasingly difficult to stay their by changing their shifts around such that it interfered with their homelife and tacking on ever increasing amounts of extra work.  Well, in any case, unless you are a counterworker (they have to deal with customers though they have very little else they are responsible for) it is no longer a good place to work.

Back to the story…

So after my last day we started getting ready to leave to visit hathyr’s family for Christmas vacation.  The day we left town I called work to find out if they had my last check ready.  Nope.  I was annoyed but let it drop and figured I’d pick it up when I got back from vacation.  Of course when I got back I called they said it wasn’t there.  At this point I was pissed off.  Withholding an employee’s last paycheck is most definitely illegal.  I remembered hearing about how many employees have gotten screwed by the company not having paid out their due vacation.  Also I’d heard that some employees have gotten screwed by not having gotten their checks on time and that it was illegal.  So I decided to do some investigating on my own.  After a quick check on California’s Department of Labor website I noticed a few interesting and important items.  Namely CA Labor Law Section 202 and 203.

Section 202 states that if you are a non-contracted employee and have given at least 72 hours advance notice of your quitting, your employer is required to have your last paycheck for you on your last day of scheduled work.  If they can’t give you the check in person they are to make a goodfaith effort to mail it to you.  Section 203 states that if they don’t have your check in your hand on that last day you may be entitled to a penalty.  Here’s the kicker.  The penalty is your rate of pay times the days that you would normally be scheduled to work from the date of your last day to the date that you finally received your last check up to a maximum of 30 days.  So if they withheld your last paycheck for 4 days that you would have worked if you were still employed you would be due your regular pay for those four days.

imageIn my case they held my check for 2.5 weeks or 14 days that I would normally have worked.  So 14 days multiplied my rate of pay for those days and I was owed a good sum of money.  So decided that I was going to file a complaint with the labor department and seek that penalty.  Had it been a few days I wouldn’t have bothered, but I was pissed at this point and I wanted to make a point.  Holding my check isn’t cool when you aren’t employed and you need the money.  So that penalty was important to me.

So I called my boss and told her that I was unhappy with the length of time that the company took to get me my last check and that I am aware of the labor laws and I was filing papers against the company because I am interested in seeking the penalty.  She told me I had to do what I had to do and wasn’t really phased by it.  She said she’d mention it to HR and see how they want to resolve this.

The next day I got a phone call and she said HR wanted to simply write me a check for the amount as they would rather resolve it out of court.  I agreed that I would be interested in this resolution and that I had already worked out the amount from my perspective and she took down my numbers and said she’d tell HR and they would compare numbers to make sure everything was kosher.  A few days passed and I called her back and she said HR had her request but she hadn’t heard anything from them yet.  So I said that I was still filing my complaint but will file a cancellation request (which CA law states you may do at anytime in one of these types of disputes) if and when this is resolved.  So I waited a while longer.  I called back and asked how things were going.  She said she would check again.  After a few days of playing phone tag back and forth I finally found out that they did indeed have a check waiting for me and I just had to wait for it to be sent to the store to pick up.  Then of course it was forgotten about by someone at HR.  My boss said that HR hasn’t been very responsive lately as they are moving to their new HQ and they have hired a lot of new people so things are getting through the cracks.  I assume that is probably why I didn’t receive my last paycheck on time in the first place.

Finally I called the other day and my boss said that they were shipping the check out and would be ready to pick up the next morning.  After waiting anxiously for the next morning, now over a month since the day of my last employment, I finally picked up the check a few days ago.  All night I was dreading that the check would be screwed up in some way and that I would end up having to go to court afterall and have to fight for this.  Fortunately everything was right with the check and I was happy.  I didn’t have to fight it.  I actually never filed the complaint, I decided to hold off and see how this was going to go.  Interestingly they didn’t ask me to sign any sort of non-disclosure agreement, which is why I’m telling you this right now.  I could still file the complaint because I imagine that other people are going to get screwed by them and I would like that to not happen.  Having this being resolved in an unofficial manner means that problem will go unsolved.  However I lack the motivation or effort to fight the powers that be…

So anyway, I got my money.  I told you about it.  Both of which make me happy.  Hopefully this won’t happen to other people but if it does, hopefully people will have the guts and stand up and call them on it.  Like I said, other states are likely to have similar laws, so if this sounds eerily familiar you might want to check your laws.  Most companies I imagine are interested in just settling out of court as it will cost them more to deal with it that way especially if they realize that they are clearly in the wrong.  By the way there is also a long statute of limitations period in California for this, 2 to 4 years depending on the situation.

imageI’m sure lots of folks would be nervous about doing this especially if they are concerned about getting bad recommendations from their previous employer.  Hell just threatening to file a complaint is stressful.  I was nervous as hell, but I also realized I had the law on my side.  It also helps when it is against a big company because it makes it less personal.  The recommendations aspect is a very real fear however the laws are pretty clear in that respect as well as an employer is legally limited to what they are allowed to say in a conversation with a future employer.  They are allowed to ask if the person worked for them and if they would hire them back.  Anything else and they are openining themselves up to the possibility of a nasty lawsuit.

Gone are the days that you work for a company and they take care of you.  These days it seems like you have to keep an eye on your employer as they are cutting every corner to make every last drip of profit they can.  To finish, I’d like to say that I’m not a litigious person.  I really don’t like getting all lawyer like on folks.  I think it’s a bad way to go about things.  In fact, if it is at all possible it would be better to have a good open communication with folks to avoid such things.  However it isn’t alway possible and sometimes things go south.  In my case I really couldn’t afford not having my paycheck.  Each day without that money means bigger credit card bills.  Bills I am already struggling to pay off.  The bigger companies like the one I worked for get the more distanced they are from the people that work for them.  They lose touch with the people that actually make the money for them.  A weeks pay may not mean much to the bigwigs, but that paycheck means a lot to the grunts on the frontline making it happen.

-hollywood