An Early Holiday Present For New York Employers: The Annual Wage Notice Requirement Will Be Eliminated
December 18, 2014
New York employers who have already begun preparing to send out annual wage notices to their employees under the Wage Theft Prevention Act can safely stop their preparations. The bill eliminating the annual wage notice requirement was delivered to the Governor yesterday and it is expected that the Governor will sign it. The bill, as currently drafted, provides that the legislation will go into effect 60 days after it is signed into law, which would mean that it would take effect after the February 1 deadline to provide the wage notices for 2015. However, Bond's Government Relations lawyers brought this concern to the attention of the Governor's office in early December, while the Governor's office and the Legislature were discussing potential chapter amendments to the bill, and it is our understanding that one of the agreed-upon chapter amendments that will be enacted early in the next legislative session will eliminate the annual wage notice requirement immediately. So, we expect that employers will not have to issue the notices in 2015. We will provide an update as soon as the Governor signs the bill, and another update once the expected chapter amendments are enacted in January. This is certainly great news for employers in New York, who will no longer have to engage in the costly and time-consuming process of issuing wage notices to all employees between January 1 and February 1 of each year.