Last verified: May 2, 2026. Two big things changed for NYC workers in early 2026: the city expanded sick leave on February 22, 2026 to add 32 hours of unpaid safe-and-sick time on top of every worker’s existing paid hours, and the state gave the Department of Labor sharp new powers to actually collect on wage-theft judgments — including liens on the boss’s property and seizure of the boss’s bank accounts. This is the practical guide to what those changes mean, what dollar amounts you can recover, which forms to file, and the phone numbers that get a real person on the line. For the full step-by-step recovery walkthrough, see our base guide on wage theft and paid sick leave recovery in NYC.
The two systems you need to know
New York has two separate enforcement bodies, and which one you call depends on what was stolen from you.
The New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) handles wage theft — unpaid wages, missed minimum wage, missed overtime, withheld tips, bounced paychecks, and unpaid wage supplements like vacation payouts. NYSDOL investigates anywhere in the state.
The NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) handles paid safe and sick leave violations under the city’s Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA), as well as fast food worker protections, and the Temporary Schedule Change law. DCWP only covers work performed inside the five boroughs.
If your employer did both — say, paid you under minimum wage AND denied sick time — you file with both. They are separate cases, and there is no penalty for filing both at once.
Wage theft: what NYSDOL can recover for you
The 2026 minimum wage in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County is $17.00 per hour. The rate for the rest of the state is $16.00 per hour. These rates went up by $0.50 on January 1, 2026, and are scheduled to be indexed to inflation starting in 2027. If you were paid below those rates for any hours worked in 2026, that is wage theft, period.
Common wage theft patterns NYSDOL investigates:
- Paid below the $17.00 NYC minimum (or $16.00 upstate)
- Tipped workers paid below the proper tipped minimum and the tip credit didn’t bring them up to full minimum
- Worked unpaid “training” hours, opening prep, or closing cleanup
- Overtime hours (over 40 per week) paid at straight time instead of time-and-a-half
- Tips pooled illegally with managers or skimmed by the house
- Final paycheck never delivered after you quit or were fired
- Paycheck bounced for “not sufficient funds” (NSF)
- Promised vacation payout, severance, or commission that never came
What you can recover
When NYSDOL issues an order to comply, the order includes 100 percent of the unpaid wages PLUS liquidated damages of up to 100 percent of those unpaid wages, plus interest, plus civil penalties on top. In practice this means a $4,000 wage theft claim can become an $8,000-plus order against the employer once liquidated damages and interest are added.
Governor Hochul’s Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Enacted Budget gave NYSDOL new collection teeth: the agency can now place liens on the employer’s property, issue warrants against their bank accounts, seize financial assets to satisfy unpaid wage theft orders, and issue stop-work orders against businesses that ignore a judgment. Translation: the orders no longer just sit on a shelf. NYSDOL is collecting.
How to file a wage theft claim — step by step
- Get the form. Download the Labor Standards Complaint Form, called LS223, from dol.ny.gov/file-labor-standards-wage-theft-claim. The form is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Bengali, Haitian Creole, Korean, Polish, and several other languages.
- Gather supporting documents. Pay stubs, cancelled checks, the bounced check itself, time records, screenshots of scheduling apps, text messages where your boss assigned hours, your offer letter, and your employee handbook if you have one. Send copies, not originals.
- Submit. You can mail or upload the form. The Wage Theft Hub at dol.ny.gov/wage-theft-hub has the current upload portal.
- Wait for assignment. A Labor Standards investigator will be assigned and will contact your employer for records. The employer has a deadline to respond.
- Cooperate. Answer the investigator’s questions promptly. If the case settles, you’ll receive a check. If the employer fights it, NYSDOL issues an order to comply with damages attached.
For questions about a wage theft submission, the NYSDOL Labor Standards line is (888) 525-2267. That number gets a live person during business hours.
Statute of limitations
You generally have six years from the date of the wage theft to file with NYSDOL. That is much longer than most workers think. If you remember being underpaid two years ago, you can still file today.
Paid Safe and Sick Leave: what changed in 2026
NYC’s Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA) was significantly expanded in 2026. The headline changes took effect February 22, 2026.
How much leave you accrue
Sick and safe leave accrues at one hour for every 30 hours worked. The annual cap depends on your employer’s size:
- 100 or more employees: up to 56 hours of paid safe and sick leave per year
- 5 to 99 employees: up to 40 hours of paid safe and sick leave per year
- 4 or fewer employees: up to 40 hours of safe and sick leave per year (paid or unpaid depends on the employer’s net income)
The 2026 add-on: 32 hours of unpaid leave on top
Beginning February 22, 2026, every covered NYC employee receives an additional 32 hours of unpaid safe and sick time on the first day of employment, refreshed at the start of each calendar year. This stacks on top of the paid leave above. So a worker at a 100-plus-employee company can now use up to 88 hours per year (56 paid + 32 unpaid). At a smaller company, that’s 72 hours (40 + 32).
Paid prenatal leave: separate, stacked, statewide
Since January 1, 2025, every private-sector employer in New York State has had to provide 20 hours of paid prenatal leave per 52-week period. This is separate from sick leave and separate from Paid Family Leave — your boss cannot make you burn through other leave first. It pays at your regular rate (or minimum wage, whichever is higher) and can be used in hourly increments for prenatal appointments, medical procedures, and pregnancy-related discussions with healthcare providers. There is no minimum tenure required. See ny.gov/programs/new-york-state-paid-prenatal-leave.
What sick and safe leave can be used for
Sick leave covers your own physical or mental illness, preventive care, and care for a covered family member. “Safe” leave covers the aftermath of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking — including time to seek shelter, counseling, court appearances, or relocation. The 2026 amendments expanded the list of covered uses; the full current list is on the DCWP FAQ at nyc.gov/site/dca/about/paid-sick-leave-FAQs.page.
What your employer cannot do
- Demand a doctor’s note for absences shorter than four consecutive workdays
- Require you to find your own replacement
- Retaliate, demote, cut your hours, or fire you for using leave
- Deny leave you’ve already accrued because the schedule is “tight”
The new enforcement reality
DCWP’s 2026 enforcement strategy got teeth. The agency has sent more than 56,000 warning letters to NYC employers about ESSTA violations. More importantly, DCWP now compares each employer’s rate of paid sick leave use against national CDC sick-leave-use data. If an employer’s workforce is using leave at an unusually low rate compared to national norms, DCWP treats that as “strong evidence of potential violations” — meaning the agency can open an investigation without waiting for a worker to file a complaint.
How to file an ESSTA complaint
- Go to nyc.gov/site/dca/about/paid-sick-leave-law.page
- Click “File a Complaint” — the form is available online and on paper
- Or call 311 and ask for “Paid Safe and Sick Leave complaint”
- Or call DCWP directly at (212) 436-0395
You can file anonymously. You do not need to be a U.S. citizen or have work authorization to use ESSTA — the law covers all employees who work in NYC.
What DCWP can recover
If DCWP finds a violation, the employer can be ordered to pay you for unlawfully denied leave (up to three times the wages owed or $250, whichever is greater), reinstate you if you were fired, pay civil penalties to the city, and post a corrected notice. Repeat violators face escalating per-employee fines.
The notice your employer must give you
DCWP issued an updated Notice of Employee Rights on February 19, 2026. Every NYC employer is required to post this notice in the workplace and provide a copy to every employee — including a fresh copy to existing employees who only saw the old version. If you have never seen this notice, that itself is a violation worth flagging when you file. The current notice is downloadable from the DCWP page above and is available in 27 languages.
Free legal help — no fee, no immigration questions
Workers do not have to navigate this alone. Several organizations offer free legal help on wage theft and paid leave cases regardless of immigration status:
- A Better Balance — free legal helpline for caregiving, sick leave, and prenatal leave issues: abetterbalance.org/get-help
- Legal Aid Society Employment Law Unit — free for low-income NYC workers
- Make the Road New York — wage theft and worker rights, with multilingual staff
- NYC Comptroller’s Workers’ Rights Hotline: (212) 669-4443
Realistic timelines
Wage theft investigations through NYSDOL typically take six months to two years from filing to order, depending on case complexity and whether the employer cooperates. ESSTA cases at DCWP usually move faster — three to nine months — because the documentation involved is narrower (did the employee accrue, did the employee request, did the employer pay).
If you can’t wait that long, you also have the right to file a private lawsuit in court instead of using the agency. A private suit under New York Labor Law lets you recover the same wages, the same liquidated damages, AND your attorney’s fees. Many wage-and-hour attorneys work on contingency, meaning you pay nothing up front. Filing with NYSDOL does not block you from going to court later, but talk to a lawyer before withdrawing an active agency case.
If your wage theft claim is tied up with a job loss, you may also be eligible for unemployment insurance while the wage case proceeds. See our full walkthrough of how to file, certify, and appeal NY State unemployment in 2026. And for a broader look at what’s new for NYC workers this year — including the schedule-change rules and pay transparency expansions — read your rights at work in 2026.
The single most important rule
Retaliation is illegal under both the state wage theft law and ESSTA. If you filed a complaint or even just asked your boss about your sick leave balance and were then fired, demoted, had your hours cut, or were threatened — that is a separate, additional violation, and the damages stack on top of whatever was originally owed. Document the timing. Save the texts. Note the date you filed and the date the retaliation started. Then add the retaliation count to your complaint.
Quick-reference contact card
- NYSDOL wage theft claim form (LS223): dol.ny.gov/file-labor-standards-wage-theft-claim
- NYSDOL Wage Theft Hub: dol.ny.gov/wage-theft-hub
- NYSDOL Labor Standards phone: (888) 525-2267
- DCWP Paid Safe and Sick Leave info: nyc.gov/site/dca/about/paid-sick-leave-law.page
- DCWP phone: (212) 436-0395, or call 311
- NY State Paid Prenatal Leave info: ny.gov/programs/new-york-state-paid-prenatal-leave
- A Better Balance free legal helpline: abetterbalance.org/get-help
Last verified: May 2, 2026. Dollar amounts and rates are current as of this date and reflect the January 1, 2026 minimum wage increase and the February 22, 2026 ESSTA amendments. If you spot an outdated figure, please flag it via the contact form.
