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Student Employment Office

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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.