Under the Wisconsin laws that govern wages and paychecks, your employer has various obligations to you to ensure you get your full paycheck on time. If you are not receiving the money you have earned when you should be receiving it, then you should learn thoroughly about the laws that apply to you.
As an employee, these laws impart many rights to you. If it turns out that your employer has violated your paycheck rights, you may need to initiate legal action to obtain a remedy.
Under Wisconsin law, most hourly and salaried employees must be paid at least monthly. Employees working on farms or for logging operations may be paid quarterly instead. Of course, employers can elect to pay you more often than monthly or quarterly, so long as the paydays are regular and reliable.
If you have been terminated or chose to quit, you must receive your final paycheck by the next payday or within 31 days, whichever comes first. However, if you lost your job because the company merged, relocated, or liquidated, you should get your final paycheck within 24 hours.
Whether you receive unused paid time off in your final paycheck depends on company policies. You are entitled to a payout for unused paid vacation time unless there is a specific policy that says you do not get that amount, perhaps because you were fired for a good cause or did not give enough notice before quitting. Ultimately, it depends on your employer’s policies, so you should examine your employee very closely.
If you owe a creditor, the creditor can go to court, obtain a decree against you for nonpayment, and then can garnish your paycheck. For example, If a creditor is seeking to collect for a type of personal debt, such as unpaid credit card or hospital bills, they have to go to court first and get a court judgment. Once the creditor has secured the court judgment, they can garnish your income to pay off the debt.
In certain circumstances, the credit does not need to obtain a court judgment first and can go directly to garnishing your paycheck. These situations include defaulted student loans, past-due child support, and unpaid taxes.
If you have caused damage to company property, or are responsible for a cash shortage at your work, then your employer can automatically deduct that amount from your paycheck in two instances:
While most wage deduction issues are governed by state law, employers are prohibited from making wage or payroll deductions that federal law considers to be illegal. Some of the most common examples of illegal payroll deductions generally include, but may not be limited to:
You have a right to receive your paycheck. If your employer withholds your pay, you can fight to get the money you are entitled to. One option is to file a Labor Standards Complaint Form with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Equal Rights Division, Standards Bureau. However, you must wait for six days until you can file. You have to file your complaint two years from when the wages were earned (not when they should have been paid). Otherwise, you can file a lawsuit and go after your unpaid wages in court.
If your paycheck is incomplete, which has happened several times in the past – whether to you or your co-workers – you may file a wage and hour lawsuit. The court will investigate to determine the cause of the violation and will provide a remedy for all affected employees.
If many workers have had the same problem, the lawsuit may be filed as a class action suit. In a class action suit, a group of people with similar complaints band together and sue the defendant as one entity. If the defendant loses, the defendant will have to make a very large payment to cover all owed to the whole group of people.
A class action suit can be very helpful if the amount of money you would individually sue over is not high – particularly, it is not high enough to economically practical to bother to file your own personal lawsuit. By uniting your claims with your co-workers, the group members share all the costs of bringing a lawsuit, and the amount of damages they can be collectively paid can be very high.
There is no law in Wisconsin preventing an employer from requiring that an employee pay for uniforms or tools. On the other hand, an employer cannot ask an employee to pay for any required medical or drug testing before starting a job. Also, if any specific terms in an employment contract were negotiated, these will need to be reviewed to see how they might affect an employee’s pay rights.
In addition, Wisconsin employers are prohibited from any form of employment discrimination towards their employees and future employee candidates. They are not allowed to withhold paychecks or take other similar actions based on an employee’s race, sex, age, religion, nation of origin, political views, or other characteristics.
Discrimination violations are processed through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC will investigate the workplace violation and prescribe the appropriate legal remedy. If the EEOC’s remedy is not sufficient or satisfactory, the affected employee or employees may need to file a private lawsuit to obtain a damages award.
If you are facing any sort of employment issues, you should consult with a local Wisconsin employment lawyer. An experienced attorney will be most knowledgeable about Wisconsin laws regarding paycheck deductions and how those laws will affect your case.
An attorney can help you determine what your next steps should be. An attorney will advise you regarding what documentation you should collect as evidence and can help you file a complaint with the necessary agencies. Further, should you take private legal action against your employer, your attorney can initiate a civil lawsuit and represent you in court as needed.
16 people have successfully posted their cases
