Labor laws were designed to protect the rights, health and safety of the employee.  In New York they barely did that until 2011 when things got worse for employees.


New York like most states is an employment-at-will state.  This means an employer can fire you for any reason what so ever.  As an example if your employer does not like the way your hair is combed, out the door you can go and so forth.

Very unfair and it gives the employer almost unlimited power over the employee.


New York also condones and supports the practice of age discrimination as well. I posted about it in an earlier entry.  Plus to show you how NY supports age discrimination they had an employment site called Hi-Tech NY.  The images of all the people on the website were under 30 except the Governor.  A nice subliminal message.  Now the site points to another website but the home pages still has a person under 30 on it.


In NY if you work more than 8 hours in a day for one employer or more than 40 in a week for one employer you must get time and a half pay.  But according to the NY DoL that is not on your base pay.  The time and a half is based on the minimum wage only.  So the employer has a way of screwing a person over with their pay.

Let's do some math.   Let's say you earn as a base pay of $20 an hour.   For a 40 hour week that is  $800 gross pay.  You work an additional 8 hours over the 40 hours.  You would think that the time and a half rate should be $30 for that 8 hours which would give you in theory an extra $240 in your gross pay.  But in reality according to the NY law time and a half is based on minimum wage only.  NY minimum wage is $7.25 and the time and a half rate is only $10.88.  So instead of getting that $240 you were expecting you get only $87.04 extra.

But not many employers know about that thankfully otherwise they would take full advantage of that.  I learned this directly from the DoL themselves.


Prior to 2011 if an employee worked more than 6 hours in a day for an employer they would be entitled to a one hour break.  It could be a solid hour, broken up into two 15 minute breaks with a half hour lunch break or some combination of such.  But in 2011 that has changed.  Now you get a minimum of 20 minutes only.  If you start after 11 then you would be eligable for an hour.  So you start at 8, work until 6 all the employer has to give you is a 20 minute meal break, period.


Prior to 2012 you were not allowed to work for a single employer for more than 6 days a week.  Now they can demand and have you work 7 days a week without a day off for weeks, months or years on end.

Prior to 2011 you were not allowed to work for a single employer for more than 18 hours in a 24 hour period.  Now that has changed.  An employer can now demand that you work a 24 hour shift non-stop.

I learned about the information presented in the last three paragraphs when I did some research for my son who works in a new supermarket and the boss there has him come in at 5AM and leave at 8PM with only a 30 minute break during that time frame every day for the past week and a half straight.  And he has yet to have a day off.  I wanted to pull out the statutes of the law directly from the NYS DoL to help him and that is where I learned that in 2011 the laws changed taking even more rights and protections away from employees.  Welcome to New York.

I told my wife that was the final straw.  We really need to get out of New York.

I don't know what the labor laws are in Florida where the Keys are (obviously),  but I am going to look into that.  It has to be better than New York where you are now reduced to a little more than a piece of dirt for some employers amusement.

Is anyone in the Keys looking for a good computer tech?????  Anyone?????

'till next time.