This is a reminder that New York employers must provide the first yearly Wage Theft Prevention Act ("WTPA") notices to employees between January 1 and February 1, 2012. (For background on The Wage Theft Prevention Act, see our previous WTPA alerts of December 2010 located at http://www.pbwt.com/resources/publications/wage-theft-protection-act/ and April 2011 located at http://www.pbwt.com/resources/publications/nyla_wage_theft_prevention/.)

The New York Department of Labor ("NYDOL") has now published model dual language forms in Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. These forms are located on the NYDOL website at http://www.labor.ny.gov/formsdocs/wp/ellsformsandpublications.shtm. If an employee designates one of the abovereferenced languages as his or her primary language, the notice must be given to the employee in that language as well as in English. If the employee designates as his primary language a foreign language for which the NYDOL does not provide a form notice, the notice may be given to the employee in English alone.