Category: Paychecks & Work
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Cross $20,000 and 200 payments on a selling app, and a stale tax ID number costs you 24 percent up front
Backup withholding is not a penalty and it is not a tax bill. It is a switch a payment platform flips when the taxpayer identification number it holds for a seller is missing or wrong, and once it is on, 24 percent of a payment comes off the top before the rest reaches the seller’s…
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Langeloth Metallurgical will pay $3,662,485 to 51 workers it refused to rehire
The NLRB announced a $3,662,485 settlement for 51 former Langeloth Metallurgical strikers, covering backpay, 401(k) contributions, interest, taxes and $1.275 million in front pay.
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July brought the fewest announced layoffs in two years, though employers named AI as the top reason for a fifth straight month
The layoff numbers for July came in lower than any month in two years. Buried inside the same report is a detail that complicates the good news: for the fifth month running, the reason employers gave most often for cutting jobs was artificial intelligence. Both things are in the same tally, and a household trying…
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Five states have locked in January 1 minimum wage raises, led by California at $17.40 an hour
Five states have now published the minimum wage that will apply inside their borders on January 1, 2027. Each of the five arrived at its number by a different route — one by an inflation formula, one by statute written years in advance, one by a ballot measure’s schedule, two by legislation — and each…
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A wage judgment against Leo’s Coney Island returns $515,000 to 143 Michigan workers
Federal wage investigators keep finding the same arrangement in restaurants: one set of timecards for the payroll system and another that records the hours actually worked. A Michigan case resolved this summer describes exactly that, with a detail that turns an ordinary overtime case into something harder to explain away. The second set of records…
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North Carolina recovered a record $3.7 million in unpaid wages for workers this year
A record year for one state’s labor department is really a record year for the workers who got their money back. North Carolina announced that it recovered $3.7 million in unpaid wages this fiscal year — the most it has ever clawed back for workers shorted on their paychecks. Behind that headline number is a…
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An Arizona senior-living operator will pay $250,000 after the EEOC said it sent a worker alone with a resident who had harassed staff
Two hundred fifty thousand dollars is what an Arizona senior-living operator agreed to pay to close a federal sexual harassment lawsuit. The detail worth a working person’s attention is who the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said did the harassing: not a supervisor and not a coworker, but residents of the facility the employees were hired…
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California’s minimum wage hits $17.40 in January, lifting the salary that exempts a worker from overtime to $72,384
If you are a salaried employee in California and your pay lands somewhere in the low seventies, a number just moved on you. The statewide minimum wage rises to $17.40 an hour on January 1, 2027, and because California ties its overtime-exemption salary to twice the minimum wage, that hourly change drags a salary floor…
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Twenty-four Anaheim hotel workers will split $2.75 million after California said the hotel ignored a law requiring their rehire
Almost everyone who gets laid off assumes the job is gone and that whoever the company hires next is none of their business. In one slice of the California economy, that assumption is wrong and expensive. A covered hotel, event center, airport food operation or building services contractor that laid workers off for a pandemic-related…
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When you leave a job, state law sets when your last paycheck and unused vacation must be paid
The last paycheck from a job you are leaving is often the one people worry about most, and for good reason. Whether you quit or were let go, there are rules about how quickly that check has to reach you, and in many states those rules are stricter than most workers realize. Some states also…