Posted on October 29th, 2019
Below is a full transcript of this video.
What’s up fellow entrepreneurs as John Fagerholm again. And today I wanted to talk about the five phases of a labor board claim.
A labor board claims can be scary and I think it’s important that employers understand step-by-step what happens.
So the first phase is the complaint. So, an employee or former employee goes to the labor department and he fills out a document indicating that he worked for a certain company and he wasn’t paid for the work that he did.
Sometimes it’ll also include overtime meal breaks, um, 10-minute breaks, whatever he’s claiming that, he didn’t receive that the law requires.
So that’s the first phase. And typically what happens is they, they filed a complaint and then a couple weeks later you’ll get the employer will get a document that says notice of complaint file. From there you just wait because there isn’t anything to do.
The next step is you’ll likely get a document that says notice of claiming conference. And what this means is that the labor board wants you to show up at a particular place on a time and date.
Sit with the former employee and, and negotiate a settlement. So there’s a, a deputy commissioner that sits there with you and the deputy commissioner tries to get you to settle the claim.
No evidence is allowed. They tell their story, you tell your story, you can’t submit documents, and then you’ll either settle it there or you won’t settle it there just depending on what the numbers are and whether it makes sense for you.
Now, if you don’t settle it, then it moves on to the next phase. And the next phase is a document that you will receive and it’s called a notice of hearing.
And it’s the same thing, almost the same thing as the notice of claiming conference. It gives you a place, a time and a date.
This time there’s a hearing officer and not a deputy commissioner. And this time they’re not trying to settle it. It’s basically a mini-trial.
So you show up, you present your evidence and you argue that you don’t owe these things that are claimed. And then the plaintiff, of course, argues that, that they are owed whatever they’re claiming that they are owned.
So then the next phase is the judgment. So roughly 30 days after the hearing, Oh, and let me, let me go. Let me step back really quickly between the notice of claim and conference.
And the hearing, if you don’t settle that, the notice of claim conference, it’s usually six months to a year before you end up at a hearing.
So after the hearing,30 days or so after that, you’ll get a judgment.
And basically, the judgment will either be for you the employer saying, no, you don’t owe anything, or it’ll be for the employee saying, that these amounts owed.
And you know, just to be accurate here, nine times out of 10, judgments are for the, for the employee. So then depending on what happens with the judgment, the fifth and final stage is the appeal.
If you elect to appeal, I don’t tend to think that appeals are good because number one, you’re required to put up a hundred percent of the judgment as a bond.
So basically you’ve just made it easy for them to collect a number. Two, only 10% of appeals result, in a favorable decision for, for the employer.
Number three, it now becomes a superior court claim, which is considerably more expensive because now a lawyer has to spend the next year and a half, you know, prosecuting this claim.
So you’re going to have all these attorney’s fees. And finally, why does it make sense to appeal?
Most of the time is that all they have to do is win $1 in the appeal and then you owe all the attorney’s fees on the other side.
So from my perspective, depending on the size of the award and the evidence that you have and what may or may not have gone wrong in the labor board hearing, I don’t tend to think that appeals or labor board appeals are a good idea anyway.
Fellow entrepreneurs be productive until next time.
This is John Fagerholm again saying, have a good day.
