K
katefromny
Guest
Hi, I am new to these boards and welcome any advice (even if it is free!) My husband and I are small business owners (trucking co.) in NYS, and hired an individual to drive one of our trucks in July 2000. We provide all our drivers with cell phones in their trucks, so we can contact them and they can contact dispatch at any time. Bottom line is: over the course of the 4+ months this gentleman(and I use that term rather loosely) worked for us, he ran up over $1400 in personal calls alone...NOT including the business calls. The first month he worked for us, the bill was $500+. $100 of that was business related, the rest was personal. We sat down with him, discussed it, gave him a written warning and adjusted his wages on his next 4 checks to reflect the balance due us. The next month he towed the line, no problems. Last two months, enormous phone bills again: month three was $300+, month 4 was $700 plus. He quit just after the four month mark (coincidentally one day before our cellular bill arrived) We gave him his last two checks, but adjusted them to compensate for the extraordinary amount of personal calls he had made. And of course, he called the NYS Dept of Labor. Apparently, there is a pesky labor law out there which prohibits employers from deducting any amount over 10% gross from employee check, plus-it must benefit employee, plus employee must expressly consent to deduction in writing, etc. etc. Now it looks like we might have to give this man the money we kept for the phone bills and pursue this through the courts. Do we have any recourse in small claims court against this man? How do we go about doing this? Is it worth it for that amount of money? He has no assets that we know of, he has no job, and just declared bankruptcy. We are pretty sure that we'll be standing at the end of a very long line...just to try and get something back from this person. Still, it is extremely frustrating to us, when we see what he did and believe that he carelessly and maliciously stole "phone time" from us--for extraordinary amounts of money, without any intent to pay it back. We feel stupid that we hired him, and are proceeding very cautiously before hiring again. It goes without saying that there are no longer cell phones provided for any of our employees. What about criminal proceedings? Would we get any satisfaction from them? Anyone who can help, I welcome the advice.