Can an employer fine an employee in Virginia? My son just started a job with a franchisee of a well-known delivery company. The franchisee is located in Virginia, and some of the items in the employee handbook sound fishy to me. He was given a sheet that listed several offenses along with the associated monetary fine. Three which stood out were: Excessive tardiness and absences - $200 Failure to clean the delivery truck - $50 Accident - $200 per pay period, &quot;until the company is made whole&quot; I have no idea how they plan to impose these fines, immediately make him pay or withhold the amount from his paycheck, but I would think that the only recourse an employer has for failing to perform assigned duties is termination, and a civil suit for actions that cause financial harm. Is this a case where employment terms, no matter how onerous, are allowed, or does this company have no idea what they are allowed to do with their employees?
Not by payroll deduction, unless the agreement to do so was not a condition of employment While it is true (as Just a guy's answer notes) that under § 40.1-29(C) an employee may agree via &quot;written and signed authorization&quot; to an employer withholding money from paychecks, the agreement to do so must be voluntary and not a condition of employment/continued employment. § 40.1-29(D) of the Code of Virginia states: No employer shall require any employee, except executive personnel, to sign any contract or agreement which provides for the forfeiture of the employee's wages for time worked as a condition of employment or the continuance therein, except as otherwise provided by law. This does not mean that an employee who damages company property or otherwise negligently causes the company financial harm is not liable for such damages, though. Damages to a vehicle or costs incurred for cleaning it might be possible damages. &quot;Excessive tardiness and absences&quot; seems like it'd be difficult, but not impossible, to prove monetary damages for. But to recover these damages against the employee's will, they'd have to file a lawsuit: they cannot simply deduct the damages from wages unless the employee voluntarily agrees to pay them that way (a blanket authorization as a condition of employment does not count). This article has some more information and a couple relevant examples (including one about vehicle damage).
No Let's consider a similar scenario. If you made a beverage which poisoned a number of people, would you be absolved of liability because you gave it away for free? Of course not. As there is no contract between you, they would have to bring an action against you in the tort of negligence or negligent misstatement OR under consumer protection law. To succeed at tort they would need to prove that you owed them a duty of care; from Donoghue v Stevenson "You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonable foresee would be likely to injure ... persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably have them in contemplation ...". Most cases will founder on your inability to foresee the use to which your software may be put. Consumer law is jurisdiction specific but they generally contain warranties that what you provide (gratis or otherwise) is fit for purpose, merchantable and that you do not make false and misleading statements. There is a chance that a case brought under this sort of law could succeed as you have not limited the purpose, specifically declared that it is not of merchantable quality and have (presumable) said what it does so that, if it doesn't do what you said, you have been misleading and deceptive.
I've litigated cases like these before. The IRS enforcement reaction is swift and severe. Penalties for the employer are heavy and rarely waived. It would be rare for a business like this to stay operational long enough to issue a W-2. A business like this would probably be shut down by the IRS and have the people responsible for the payroll function, at a minimum, promptly burdened with tax liens, within four to six months. These cases also constitute a significant share of all criminal tax prosecutions. The odds of someone doing this spending several years in federal prison is high. Generally speaking, if the wrongdoing is fully on the part of the employer without the collusion or knowledge of the employee, the IRS will not force the employee to double pay the taxes that should have been withheld by the employer in this situation. Instead, this IRS will try to recover the amounts that were withheld from the employees but not delivered to the IRS. It will seek to recover these amounts from the employer and also from other responsible persons in the organization (and from outsourced professionals) with the authority to pay the IRS who did not do so. There may be circumstances, if push comes to shove, where the IRS could collect from the employees in a case like this one (I've never had occasion to need to research that issue), but that would be the rare exception and not the rule, in practice. On the other hand, if the employer simply does not withhold taxes or prepare W-2s at all, and either 1099s people who should have been classified as employees (or files no information tax returns at all), the IRS will generally insist that the employee pay income taxes on the full amount owed and that they pay the employee part of payroll taxes. It will also pursue the employer for the employer's share of payroll taxes. The employer will also be jointly and severally liable for any taxes that should have been reported and subjected to withholding that are not paid by the employee (perhaps because the employee spent all the money). Sometimes cases like this are also criminally prosecuted, but it is less common to do so.
I will assume B.C. as your specific jurisdiction: there could be provincial differences. As phoog says, you certainly may mention this problem to management, who have an interest in keeping you happy. No law against that. As for the "legality" of sexual harassment, the CBA BC branch says that "Sexual harassment, which is discrimination based on sex, is illegal under the BC Human Rights Code". It is interesting to see what the code actually says. Section 8 Discrimination in accommodation, service and facility says (1) A person must not, without a bona fide and reasonable justification, (a) deny to a person or class of persons any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public, or (b) discriminate against a person or class of persons regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or class of persons. The question is whether using the term "babe" constitutes discrimination against a person regarding service because of sex. This article on the Law Society of BC web site specifically identifies "verbal harassment" as an instance: Verbal harassment – This comes from anyone within the firm and or other workplace or a person who does business with the firm or company. Some examples are: referring to an adult as a babe, honey, girl or stud; whistling at someone; turning work discussion to sexual topics; asking personal questions of a sexual nature; making sexual comments about a person’s clothing, anatomy or looks; or asking someone repeatedly for dates and refusing to take no for an answer. (emphasis added). In case you're thinking that maybe there's a difference in what the code says regarding services and what it says regarding employment, section 13 Discrimination in Employment says: (1) A person must not (a) refuse to employ or refuse to continue to employ a person, or (b) discriminate against a person regarding employment or any term or condition of employment because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, political belief, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation or age of that person or because that person has been convicted of a criminal or summary conviction offence that is unrelated to the employment or to the intended employment of that person. In other words, it is defined simply in terms of "discrimination", which means "making a distinction". It is known that unwanted sexual advances constitute illegal discrimination, see Janzen v. Platy Enterprises Ltd. [1989] 1 SCR 1252. The court found that Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination. Sexual harassment in the workplace is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature that detrimentally affects the work environment or leads to adverse job‑related consequences for the victims of the harassment. They did not, however, find that this is the only form of sexual discrimination (obviously, since it isn't). I can't point to case law indicating whether gender-biased expression are actionable, but that would be consistent with the letter of the law and "babe" is indeed an example cited in the Law Society article.
I assume you're talking about this case: Bus lane camera mistakes woman's sweater for number plate. No he couldn't just ignore it - because that doesn't actually result in it getting put in front of a human (judge or otherwise). Instead the fine would escalate and ultimately be passed to a collections agency. Only challenging the Penalty Charge Notice (as this person did) would get a human involved. As a bonus, if the automated fine happens to come with a S172 notice to identify the driver ignoring that is an offence in of itself (irrespective of the original alleged offence), and in many cases carries a worse penalty (£1000 and 6 points IIRC). what if this item of clothing became fashionable and was therefore causing this person to receive hundreds of these fines every week? While it's unlikely to get to that stage - the item of clothing on its own wouldn't do it, there needed to be a specific partial-obscurement of the garment as well, it's not impossible, after all perhaps it's their favorite sweater, they always carry their bag like that and cut across the bus lane on their way to work etc. In those circumstances there's nothing legally that changes, I'd expect the poor vehicle owner to be on first name terms with the people at the council enforcement call centre in question sooner rather than later. Re edit: Suppose I want to annoy somebody as much as possible, what's to stop me from printing a t-shirt with their actual number plate on it, then walking around past all sorts of cameras, knowing that they will receive multiple fines every day and have no choice but to keep calling and explaining. After all, the council has no duty to make it easy for someone to get through on the phone, so, potentially, I could walk around bus lanes and car parks all day. I could get some friends to do this all over the country in different local authority areas and the victim could - literally - have not enough hours in the day to have to keep fighting false fines. Would they not have some recourse to sue for harassment or &quot;vexatious litigation&quot;? In all honesty I don't know for sure what would happen in this scenario - I can't think of a similar enough case. But I would expect targeting an individual in this manner would qualify as harassment pretty easily and for which there are both criminal and civil actions that can be taken. I suppose hypothetically you could argue that the &quot;number plate shirt&quot; is effectively being used to make false allegations that the car's registered keeper had committed crimes, which opens up avenues to prosecution for Perverting the Course of Justice or wasting police time. But I have no idea how likely that would be to be pursued.
Unless it is prohibited by law in some state (such as California), a server's employment contract can have a clause holding the server responsible for an unpaid tab. Even in lieu of such a clause, since in most states employment is at-will, the employee can be fired if they do not do as told. There is a limit to the effect that their wage cannot be reduced below minimum wage. The question of the political rationale of this practice is outside the scope of law, but there are some legal factors that can lead to getting compensation from a server, even if pay-docking is prohibited. If a server intentionally colludes with a dine-and-hash customer, the server is liable. The server might also be negligent, for example they may have failed to notify management of evidence of an impending dine-and-dash such as overhearing a conversation, or watching the customers trickle out; or, disappearing for an unreasonable time for a smoke break (leaving the table unattended). Liability requires a lawsuit where the court decides if the server should pay.
I can't find any law that would prevent an employer from requiring this. Under current Florida law, an employer can even demand passwords and access to an employee's social media accounts. A bill was proposed to prohibit this, but it hasn't passed. Generally, an employer can require anything they want as a condition of employment, as long as it is not illegal. Florida has at-will employment so the employer could certainly fire the employee if they don't comply.
What can you do? Can you sue the debt collector? Can you sue your employer for improperly cooperating? Yes. Also report the debt collector to the appropriate regulatory agency for violation of laws relating to debt collection. Possibly refer the debt collector and/or employer to law enforcement and the DA for theft and fraud. Honestly, this is a pretty rare fact pattern. Far more common is for the debt collector to have a court judgment obtained by default against the debtor and for the debtor to not realize that the debtor has been served with process or for the debt collector to have used &quot;sewer service&quot; in which the process server lied about delivering process to the debtor. More to the point, what needs to be done to halt this process until the matter is sorted out? Probably it could be stopped with a temporary restraining order from the court in which the lawsuits are filed. But a letter to the employer and debt collector pointing out the there is no court order of judgment would probably stop the employer from coooperating. Is is possible to accomplish this pro se, or would you need a lawyer? You need a lawyer. This is very hard to do right pro se.