News and Announcements

WAGE THEFT PREVENTION ACT
The New York State Wage Theft Prevention Act went into effect on Saturday, April 9th. This law is an
enhancement of the NYS Labor Law Acknowledgement that employers currently provide to all newly hired
employees. What this means to employers is that they are required to obtain a signed and dated written
acknowledgement whenever a student who has never worked as a student worker on the RIT campus is hired
by your department. Employers do not need to obtain this form from students who have previously worked
on-campus.
Currently, employers are required to obtain a signed and dated NYS Labor Law Acknowledgement Form for
each newly hired student worker. This form has been replaced with three new forms; Notice for Hourly Rate
Employees, Notice for Multiple Rate Employees, and Notice for Exempt Employees. In addition to a new form
format, you will notice several additional items, some of which do not apply. I will identify those items that do
not need to be answered for you below. One noticeable difference on the forms is that the acknowledgement
must also include an affirmation that the employee accurately identified his/her primary language to the
employer and that the notice provided by the employer was in the language identified. At this time, New York
State has only provided the forms in English. You will be notified of the changes or new forms as they are
made available.
The new forms can be found on the SEO website (www.rit.edu/seo) on the ‘On-Campus Employment Forms’
page. You will notice a new grouping of forms under the title ‘NYS Notice and Acknowledgement of Pay Rate
and Payday Forms’. All three forms require you to answer ‘1 Employer Information’.
Notice and Acknowledgement of Pay Rate and Payday: This form will be used for the majority, if not all, of
your student workers. This form is to be used for new student workers who work one job in your department.
All items must be answered, except for item ‘4 – Allowances taken’. Leave item 4 blank.
Notice for Multiple Hourly Rate Employees: This form is to be used for new student workers who are being
hired into multiple jobs at different pay rates within the same department. Item ‘4 – Allowances
taken’ does not need to be answered. Item 7 is just a statement of what the expected overtime rate will be for
each position if overtime were to be received. No answer is required.
Notice for Exempt Employee: This form will be used for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTA’s) only. Employers
may disregard items 4 ‘Allowances taken’ and 7 ‘Overtime Pay Rate’. You may leave these two items blank.
Once the appropriate form is completed and signed, a copy must be given to the student and the original must
be attached to the SEO Hire Form and sent to Student Employment where the forms will be kept for six years.
There will be changes to this process as New York State makes more information available. In the meanwhile,
your cooperation with the process outlined above will be greatly appreciated.
This notice must be given to employees on an official form from the New York State Department of Labor at the time of hiring, before they do any work. The employer must complete the form and have the employee sign a statement of acknowledgement of the written notice and keep the signed statement for 6 years.
STUDENT EMPLOYMENT PROCEDURE CHANGE
Given that RIT employs approximately 8,000 student employees annually, the Student
Employment Office receives thousands of student payroll forms to process during each
academic quarter. The SEO staff works diligently to process the paperwork as quickly as
possible, but there are several issues that slow down our progress and that's why we're asking
for your help.
- Faxing: Many of you have been faxing student payroll forms to the Student Employment Office for processing. However, the sheer volume of faxes sent to us is causing issues between our department and some of yours. We have been receiving faxes that are blank, faxes that are too light to read, faxes that are incomplete, etc. As a result, the SEO staff is spending valuable time trying to decipher the paperwork and answering your calls asking if we received your faxes when the time should be spent actually processing the paperwork. To ensure that we receive the paperwork in its entirety, we are asking that you have the paperwork hand delivered or put it into the interoffice mail. Starting Wednesday, December 8th, we will no longer be accepting faxed paperwork unless requested by a member of the SEO staff.
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Send Backs:
To avoid having student employment paperwork returned to you, please follow these few simple steps:
- Check to see if the student has the 2010/2011 Employment Eligibility Card with registration verification for the winter quarter ('102' should be initialed by SEO on the employment card). If the student does not have an Employment Eligibility Card, do not send the paperwork to us.
- Make sure that the SEO forms are complete prior to sending them to us. Incomplete forms cannot be processed.
- Use the correct pay period start and end dates. The Bi-Weekly Pay Schedule can be found on the SEO website at www.rit.edu/seo.
- Be sure to include the NYS Acknowledgement Form with the hire paperwork for new hires (they are not necessary for rehires) and complete the form in its entirety, including the overtime rate for hourly wages (the over-time rate is required for all students). The overtime rate is 1.5 times the hourly rate.