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North Dakota Payday

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Is there a law in North Dakota that a worker must be paid on payday?

In most states, including North Dakota, it is against the law for employers not to pay employees on the designated payday.  Though employers do have every right to establish a set payday, they must honor that schedule once it has been established.

If employers fail to pay their employees on payday, it is a violation of the state minimum wage law.  Because the employer is not paying the employee anything, they are actually paying less than the minimum wage.  The agency that enforces these laws has different names in different states, but in North Dakota it’s the  Wage and Hour Division of the state Department of Labor.

The federal minimum wage law applies to companies that have revenues of more than $500,000 per year.  If a company fails to pay employees on payday, it might also be a violation of that law.  The federal minimum wage law also applies to employees who are involved in interstate commerce.  These types of jobs might include answering or placing phone calls from other states, manufacturing products that are sold in another state, or ordering products or handling mail from another state.

The federal law clearly states that employees must be paid at least $5.85 per hour.  The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is the relevant statute.  The law is actually enforced by the United States Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division.

If a worker is collecting the federal minimum wage, but not receiving his or her additional monies that were promised, the U.S. Department of Labor probably will not get involved.  In such situations, the employee would probably need to sue his or her employer, or take the employer to small claims court. 

In some states, there are laws that require employers to make good on wages that were promised to employees.  Sometimes, these laws also cover benefits.  In these particular states, the state Department of Labor pursues the case for the employee.

For states that do not have such laws, the employee would need to hire a lawyer in order to recover the promised benefits and wages. JH