Construction & day labor NY · NJ · FL
Day labor, demolition, painting and renovation crews are often paid by the day, in cash, for whatever the day turned out to be. The law counts the hours anyway.
HOW THE PAY GOES WRONG HERE
Each of these may be a claim under federal law or the law of the state where you worked. The oldest weeks fall out of reach as time passes, so the clock matters.
A day rate covers straight time only. Every hour over 40 in a week is owed at one and a half times the regular rate, and the regular rate is the day rate spread over the hours actually worked. If the day rate already paid straight time for those hours, the extra half is what remains owed.
The employer must keep time and pay records. When it did not, courts let you prove the hours from your own credible account, and the employer then has to disprove it.
New York requires manual workers to be paid weekly, within seven days of the end of the week worked.
If you bring no crew, no equipment and no business of your own, you are usually an employee, whatever the foreman calls you. New Jersey’s ABC test starts from that presumption.
Contractors reopen under new names. The individual owner who set the pay can be liable too, and a company that reopens under a new name does not always escape. We look at that.
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Construction & day labor
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