If your boss in New York shorted your paycheck, denied you sick time, or refused to pay overtime, you have two of the strongest enforcement systems in the country backing you up — and as of 2026, both got a lot sharper. The New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) gained new powers to put liens on employer property, seize financial assets, and issue stop-work orders to collect unpaid wages. The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) expanded paid time off to cover 4.3 million workers and added a new bank of unpaid protected hours available from day one of employment.
This is the practical, jargon-free guide to actually using those systems: what counts as wage theft, what your sick-leave rights are right now, where to file, what to expect, and how the city and state will actually go after a non-paying employer. Every number below is sourced to the agency that enforces it.
Last verified: May 16, 2026.
What counts as wage theft in New York
The NYSDOL Division of Labor Standards accepts wage-theft claims for a much broader set of problems than most workers realize. According to the agency’s official intake page at dol.ny.gov/file-labor-standards-wage-theft-claim, you can file an Unpaid Wages claim if any of these happened to you:
- Your employer did not pay you for all hours worked, including on-the-job training time.
- Your paycheck bounced for non-sufficient funds.
- You did not receive all of your tips.
- Your rate of pay was lowered without prior notice.
- You did not receive paid sick leave.
You can also file separate claims for illegal deductions (including charges for damages or being overcharged for the Paid Family Leave contribution), for unpaid wage supplements (vacation, holiday pay, bonuses that were promised in writing or verbally), and for minimum-wage and overtime underpayment. There is a specific category for “minimum wage extras” — pay owed for cleaning your own uniform, call-in pay, and additional pay when your workday spans more than 10 hours start to finish.
The 2026 minimum wage floor — the number every claim starts from
Before you can prove you were underpaid, you need to know what you should have been paid. As of January 1, 2026, the rates posted on the official NYSDOL minimum wage page at dol.ny.gov/minimum-wage are:
- New York City: $17.00 per hour.
- Long Island and Westchester: $17.00 per hour.
- Remainder of New York State: $16.00 per hour.
For tipped food service workers in NYC, Long Island, and Westchester, the legal minimum cash wage is $11.35 per hour with a $5.65 tip credit — meaning if your tips plus cash wage do not add up to $17.00 per hour, your employer owes you the difference. For tipped service employees (non-food-service hospitality), the cash wage is $14.15 with a $2.85 tip credit. In the rest of New York State, food-service tipped workers must receive at least $10.70 cash wage with a $5.30 tip credit.
Home care aides are on a different schedule. Effective January 1, 2026, home care aides must receive at least $19.65 per hour for work performed in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, and $18.65 per hour in the remainder of the state. That floor is non-negotiable regardless of agency or staffing-firm policies.
If you are paid below these floors for any hour worked, that is wage theft. Period.
What changed for NYC paid sick leave in February 2026
The biggest enforcement story of the year is the expansion of NYC’s Earned Safe and Sick Time Act, now branded as the Protected Time Off Law. According to the official DCWP worker rights page at nyc.gov, here is what every NYC worker is currently entitled to:
- Up to 40 or 56 hours of paid protected time off per year, depending on employer size.
- An additional 32 hours of unpaid protected time off available from the beginning of employment, with another bank of 32 unpaid hours immediately available on the first day of the next calendar year.
- 20 hours of paid prenatal leave, separate from and on top of regular protected time off.
- The right to use that time for childcare, illness, medical appointments, safe-leave reasons related to domestic violence or stalking, and more.
The 56-hour paid tier applies to employers with 100 or more employees. Employers with 5 to 99 employees must provide up to 40 hours of paid leave. Employers with four or fewer employees and at least $1 million in net income must provide up to 40 hours of paid leave. Employers with four or fewer employees and less than $1 million in net income must still provide up to 40 hours of leave — unpaid, but protected. Only hours worked inside New York City count toward your accrual.
One requirement employers routinely violate: your paystub or an employee-accessible electronic system must show your accrued, used, and total available leave balances. If you cannot see those numbers, that is itself a violation worth filing on.
Where to file — the exact forms, numbers, and links
For state-level claims (unpaid wages, illegal deductions, minimum-wage and overtime violations, and unpaid sick-leave hours under state law), the form is LS 223 — Labor Standards Complaint Form for Individuals, available at dol.ny.gov/LS223-doc. There is no fee. You can submit by mail to the Division of Labor Standards at the Harriman State Office Campus in Albany. Send copies of supporting documents (pay stubs, cancelled checks, bounced check notices, time records, written benefit policies, text messages from your manager) — never the originals. For questions about your submission, email LSAsk@labor.ny.gov or call 888-525-2267.
For NYC-specific paid sick leave and protected time off complaints, file directly with DCWP. The fastest path is the online complaint form at the DCWP business portal (a866-dcwpbp.nyc.gov), or you can call 311 from inside NYC and say “Protected Time Off” for fast-track help. Outside NYC, dial 212-NEW-YORK. You can also email OLPS@dcwp.nyc.gov. The DCWP Office of Labor Policy and Standards handles intake.
If you are a farm worker, use form LS 710 instead of LS 223. If you believe you were paid less than coworkers for similar work because of a protected class (race, gender, disability, age, etc.), file pay-equity complaint LS 608.2 with NYSDOL.
The new enforcement teeth as of FY 2025–26
This is what makes 2026 different from prior years. Governor Hochul’s Fiscal Year 2025–2026 Enacted Budget expanded NYSDOL’s authority to collect on wage-theft judgments. According to the agency, NYSDOL can now:
- Place liens on employers’ real property — which can prevent the sale or refinancing of a business owner’s commercial real estate until back wages are paid.
- Issue warrants and seize financial assets directly from employer bank accounts.
- Issue stop-work orders after a judgment, halting business operations until the wage-theft order is satisfied.
- Use mediations, levies, and subpoenas as part of standard investigation procedure, with stricter internal deadlines.
What this means in practice: a wage-theft case that historically might have ended in a paper judgment the employer ignored can now end with the agency directly emptying a payroll account or padlocking the front door. Workers who file in 2026 are filing into a meaningfully stronger collection environment than workers who filed in 2024.
DCWP’s enforcement record — what to expect realistically
According to DCWP, since the NYC paid safe and sick leave law took effect in April 2014, the agency has received more than 3,450 paid-sick-leave complaints, closed more than 2,500 investigations, and obtained resolutions requiring nearly $21 million in combined fines and restitution for more than 60,000 workers. Headline settlements include Con Edison paying $202,000 in restitution to 480 part-time entry-level workers plus $40,000 in civil penalties for denying access between June 2018 and June 2021, a Taco Bell franchisee paying more than $819,000 in restitution to 888 workers plus nearly $81,000 in penalties, and a White Castle settlement of nearly $777,000 in restitution to 1,500 workers plus more than $75,000 in penalties.
What the numbers tell you: enforcement is real, but it is also slow. Median resolution times run into the months, sometimes longer. File anyway. The agency’s pattern is to consolidate worker complaints across the same employer, so your single complaint is often the trigger that opens a much larger investigation.
Eligibility checklist before you file
Run through this before you submit anything:
- Was the work performed in New York State? (For NYC paid sick leave, hours must specifically be worked in NYC.)
- Do you have a date range, a pay-period structure, and a dollar figure you can defend?
- Do you have at least one piece of supporting documentation — a paystub, a text message, a schedule, a written job offer, a tip-out sheet?
- Are you still within the statute of limitations? Most wage claims under New York Labor Law can reach back six years; the DCWP sick-leave law allows complaints generally within two years of the violation.
- Are you a current employee worried about retaliation? Both NYSDOL and DCWP enforce anti-retaliation provisions — firing or punishing a worker for filing is itself a separate, sanctionable violation.
Deadlines you actually need to remember
- Wage and hour claims (unpaid wages, overtime, minimum wage): Generally six years to file under New York Labor Law.
- NYC paid safe and sick leave complaints: Generally two years from the violation.
- Pay-equity complaints: Six years.
- Retaliation complaints: File as soon as possible — typically two years for civil retaliation actions under state law, and parallel timelines for DCWP-administered retaliation under city law.
Do not wait to confirm your numbers before filing. The agency will help you reconstruct the calculation if your records are incomplete; what they cannot do is restart the clock.
Where to get free help
If you want a human to walk you through the paperwork before you submit, free assistance is available through the FARE Grant (Filing a Labor Standards Complaint) program administered by NYSDOL, accessible from dol.ny.gov/wage-theft-hub. Community legal services organizations across New York City also handle wage-theft intake at no charge for low- and moderate-income workers; the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs operates language-access referrals at 311 for workers more comfortable in a language other than English. The DCWP Office of Labor Policy and Standards also provides direct, free worker-side guidance — you do not need a lawyer to file.
If your employer disputes the eventual order, the case can be appealed to the Industrial Board of Appeals (industrialappeals.ny.gov), an independent state body. Workers do not pay to participate in the appeal — the employer’s appeal does not stop the case, only delays final collection.
Related guides on HelpNewYork
For the deeper procedural walkthrough of the NYSDOL collection process and the DCWP investigation steps, see our field guide to how NY State and NYC actually enforce wage theft. If your wage-theft situation overlaps with a job loss, our 2026 New York unemployment insurance guide covers how to file, certify, and appeal in parallel. And for the foundational overview of every right NYC workers carry into the job, see NYC worker rights: paid sick leave, minimum wage, and protections.
Bottom line
The single biggest mistake New Yorkers make on wage and sick-leave violations is assuming nothing will happen if they file. In 2026 — with NYSDOL’s new lien, seizure, and stop-work powers, and with DCWP’s expanded 32-hour day-one unpaid bank layered on top of 40 to 56 paid hours plus 20 prenatal hours — that assumption is wrong. The forms are free, the numbers are public, and the agencies have collection tools they did not have last year. The only question is whether you submit the paperwork.
Last verified: May 16, 2026. Primary sources: NYS Department of Labor (dol.ny.gov/minimum-wage, dol.ny.gov/file-labor-standards-wage-theft-claim), NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (nyc.gov/site/dca/workers/workersrights/paid-sick-leave-law-for-workers.page).
