New York Extends Wage Deduction Rules

Seyfarth Synopsis:  New York’s expanded list of permissible wage deductions has been extended until 2020.

Here’s a welcome development for New York employers for the New Year:  the Labor Law provision that expanded the permissible grounds for deductions from employees’ wages has been extended through November 2020.

As we reported previously, those provision expired on November 6, 2018.  Although both houses of the Legislature passed a bill in June 2018 to extend the law, Governor Andrew Cuomo did not sign it until December 2018.  In lieu of making the provisions permanent, however, the new enactment simply extends the expiration date until November 2020, eight years following the law’s initial effective date in November 2012.  The amendment was first set to expire in 2015 until Governor Cuomo signed a bill extending the expiration date to November 6, 2018.

The provisions appear in section 193 of the Labor Law.  That section was amended in 2012 to allow deductions from wages for employees’ gym membership dues, discounted parking or mass transit passes, cafeteria and vending machine purchases at an employer’s place of business, tuition fees for pre-school through post-secondary school, and daycare, before-school and after-school care expenses, among other categories.  Most notable were the new provisions allowing deductions for recovery of overpayments of wages and for repayment of wage advances.