Unpaid Overtime, Wages, and Commissions
Mallon LLC vigorously represents employees who are owed unpaid wages, including overtime pay, vacation pay, commissions, and bonuses. We regularly assist workers who seek to recover pay and other wages they are owed, under wage laws. We have successfully forced employers to pay employees commissions, incentive compensation, and other bonuses that were due, that were initially denied to our clients by the employers.
Special wage laws have been enacted to help workers recover such owing amounts, including:
Overtime / Minimum Wages. In the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) to combat the “evils and dangers” resulting from wages too low to buy the bare necessities of life and from long hours of work injurious to health. Congress intended that the FLSA “protect the rights of those who toil.” To that end, the FLSA establishes a federal minimum wage and generally requires employers to pay “a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate” to employees who work more than 40 hours in a single workweek (see Schilling v. Schmidt Baking Co., 876 F.3d 596 (4th Cir. 2017)).
State Wage Acts. States and the District of Columbia, also, have enacted laws to help employees recover past due wages. As one example, the Maryland General Assembly enacted the Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law (“MWPCL”), see Maryland Code, § 3-501, et seq., Labor & Employment Article. Under the MWPCL, an employer who fails to pay wages earned is subject to civil liability. “Wages,” under the MWPCL is broadly defined to include all amounts of compensation due to an employee for employment, including wages, salary, bonuses, commissions, fringe benefits, overtime wages, and any other compensation promised for service. The MWCPL provides a direct cause of action against an employer, and also authorizes an award of triple damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs for a willful violation. D.C. has a similar unpaid wages statute, the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Revision Act of 1992, codified at D.C. Code § 32-1301, et seq.
Gender-pay Differences. The Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d) (the “EPA”), prohibits employers from paying female employees less than male employees for equal work on jobs that require equal skill, effort, and responsibility. As U.S. Supreme Justice Thurgood Marshall explained, writing for the Court in Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, 417 U.S. 188, 195 (1974): “Congress’ purpose in enacting the Equal Pay Act was to remedy what was perceived to be a serious and endemic problem of employment discrimination in private industry—the fact that the wage structure of ‘many segments of American industry has been based on an ancient but outmoded belief that a man, because of his role in society, should be paid more than a woman even though his duties are the same . . . .’ The solution adopted was quite simple in principle: to require that ‘equal work will be rewarded by equal wages.’” The Supreme Court further explained how the EPA applies: “The whole purpose of the Act was to require that these depressed wages be raised, in part as a matter of simple justice to the employees themselves, but also as a matter of market economics, since Congress recognized as well that discrimination in wages on the basis of sex ‘constitutes an unfair method of competition.’” (Brennan at 207.)
The firm regularly represents employees who are owed overtime, unpaid wages (including unpaid minimum wages), commissions, bonuses, and other employee benefits. Please contact Mallon LLC if your employer owes you unpaid compensation amounts or if you are seeking wage recovery in Baltimore, MD, Prince George's County, MD, or throughout Maryland and Washington DC.