On February 26, 2015, the D.C. Wage Theft Prevention Amendment Act (the “Act”) became law in the District of Columbia. As discussed in our previous blog posts and original client alert on the Act (available
here,
here,
here,
here and
here), the Act made significant changes to several employment laws in the District of Columbia and placed new requirements on D.C. employers. One significant aspect of the new law requires employers to issue pay notices to their employees.
On March 3, 2015, the Mayor issued template notices which employers can use to fulfill the pay notice requirement in the Act. The templates are available here and here. Such notices must be issued to new employees upon hire. Employers have until May 27, 2015 to issue notices to existing employees. Additionally, employers must provide amended notices to employees any time any of the above information is changed (including, but not limited to, any time an employee’s rate of pay increases or decreases).
Under the Act, employers are required to provide pay notices in the employee’s native language if the employer knows the employee has a primary language other than English, or the employee requests the notice in another language, and the Mayor has provided a template notice in that language. The Mayor has not issued notices in any language other than English. Accordingly, at this time employers should use the English notice for all employees.
In another development, the D.C. Department of Employment Services (“DOES”) published guidance on the Act’s requirements. The guidance can be found here.
