The public policy in the US works in favor of the employees and helps them claim their waiting time penalty. The rules in the US, especially in California is very strict. A single day of delay in paying the wage of an employee may result in a serious waiting time penalty.
Claims
The legislation has enacted some serious statement regarding the waiting time penalty. If the employee claims any blame against his employer about delaying or withholding payment of their wage after the conclusion of their career, then the waiting time penalty might be applied on the blamed employer after proper verification of the incident.
Before taking any action against the employer it has to be properly verified that the employer and employee had a true working relationship between them. Then the authorities must check if the employer willfully missed paying the wage or if it was accidental. If the employer has a valid reason behind missing payment of wages to the employee, then the employer might be exempt from the penalty.
If it is found out that employer willfully failed to pay wages to his employees, then the waiting time penalty will be applicable to the employer.
Why the Penalty Exists
The waiting time penalty has been a useful policy for the employees who don’t receive their wage at right time. It’s an effective policy for employees to get their justified wages back just on time or get the penalty he deserves. There is a certain rule of fixing the penalty.
The daily wage rate of the employee is taken to account before setting up the entire penalty rate. And then the one day wage of that employee multiplied by the number of days of delay. And the maximum number of delay is 30 days. After 30 days of delay, no further number of days will be taken into account.
So, it means each day delay in paying the wage will result in the employee to pay double, then triple, then four times, five times and after 30 days the figure will be 30 times more than the actual daily wage rate. The more delay the employer makes, the more penalty fees the employee will be rewarded.
In last few years, a few remarkable events have taken place in California where the employees have claimed to receive their payment late from their employer. After further verification, the allegation against the employer has proven to be true and those employers were charged to pay the full penalty to those respective employees.