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Is it legal to with-hold any days from someone's salary?
I used to run a business in Canada, and it was customary for the employees to have two weeks of their salary with-held. So basically if you're getting a check on September 14th, it's the pay for work done in the pay period ending August 31th. And then whenever that employee leaves the company, they get paid for 2 weeks of extra salary on top of whatever other payments they would be entitled to. In fact most companies that I know off in Canada with-hold 1 or 2 weeks of pay.
So... now someone told me that this is not legal in the DR. So basically when I pay the employees I have to pay them for work performed up to the current day, and that I can't hold anything back. This doesn't make sense to me because if for example I have hourly workers who get paid by the hour, I would have to assume that everyone will work their full hours on the day that I'm paying them.
I would appreciate it if anyone could shed some light on the matter.
I know that some of the big Dominican hotel builders, like the one that did the Portillo resort, regularly do not pay their Haitian crews for 24 days, and keep them on the job site without leave... What is legal here and what is practiced here... now that is a big divide.
I used an outside payroll / HR service, and we ended the pay periods on Saturdays, which were then paid weekly on the following Fridays. This is fine.
Hourly workers in the DR live hand to mouth for the most part, and they expect / need to be paid every week. Salaried or upper workers may be fine with getting paid on the 15th and the last day of the month.
For the most part in the DR, when a worker leaves employment, they are getting a fat severance check which would replace the wages withheld in Canada in your example.
Gringo Carlos: Do you know if what you were doing with your payroll was legal though? I understand there's a difference between what's legal and what's practiced, but I just want to make sure that no matter what I do, I'm doing it by the book.
My payroll service did everything by the book, and had legal counsel. The only way they did things was by the book, but they would let me do things that went above and beyond if I wanted to, still advising me that it wasn't required under the law.
They were processing payroll for other clients as well, probably on the order of 4,000+ workers in 20 or 30 companies. Never a problem in 5 years.
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Is it legal to with-hold any days from someone's salary?
