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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

Off to the Department of Labour, they won't look kindly on late paychecks.

Seems unnecessary and malicious.

Im not sure why anyone would want to report their employer for a minor delay when a bank is folding. Hopefully the DOL would ignore that.

It is basically the same as reporting your employer because for a late check because the mailman got shot on your doorstep.

I feel like it also does a disservice to people who have real late paycheck abuses.

The warning signs were all there since January. There needs to be some incentive for the employer not to use an unsound bank because if there aren't you end up in a situation like this, where the government needs to step in again and bail out depositors because the alternative would be worse.

If it was a single company, then it might help. But this is likely to affect hundred if not thousands of companies. Millions of potential complaints. That will be a cluster, if everyone does complain. DOL may not like it, but they will likely take into account the fact that these were caused by a bank failure to a scale we've not seen in a decade. At the end of the day the culprit is a bank that's now toast, or the FDIC... who's immune.

And if this goes on for any length of time, you could sue your employer... but lack of payroll would only happen if the company no longer has any money - effectively making them bankrupt. Again you could name SVB in the lawsuit, or the FDIC... but good luck getting blood from the stone.

>And if this goes on for any length of time, you could sue your employer... but lack of payroll would only happen if the company no longer has any money - effectively making them bankrupt. Again you could name SVB in the lawsuit, or the FDIC... but good luck getting blood from the stone.

You could also sue the CEO directly. Failure to pay employee wages is one of the few things that can (somewhat) easily pierce the corporate veil.

Which is why an enormous number of people will be fired, furloughed or reduced to minimum wage on Monday if this isn’t resolved.

Well it's all moot, the fed stepped in and we're all safe.

For those unaware, dept of labor takes late paychecks seriously and will help you as a worker. Late paychecks and other forms of wage theft make up the single largest category of theft. Too bad more people are riled up over small time crimes like shoplifting leaving many in the dark about what they can do about their employers stealing from them.

Very true, but this seems like a surprise logistical payment obstacle for most employers and not anything deserving the label of theft. I suspect most departments of labor would see it that way as well, not penalizing employers who were otherwise able and willing to make payroll even if they might indeed help the affected workers.

Both categories of crime are serious. I don't know why that's not an option.

Fun fact: the catholic church considers both murder and late wages "sins that cry to heaven". If someone can't make the rent because someone else messed up it can have enormous ripple effects.

Yes, and emphasized in Jewish law, too.

- Leviticus 19:13 - "You shall not leave [with you] the payment of a worker overnight until the morning..."

- Deuteronomy 24:15 - "On his day you should give his wages, the sun should not set on it, because he is a poor man and his life depends on it...”

And that's true whether you're a super-religious Chassid type or a super-socialist Workman's Circle Bundist type:

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1218800/jewis...

https://www.laborpress.org/workmen-s-circle-backs-fight-for-...

Simple: other forms of theft lead to violence immediately

Who will be liable? The employer? Rippling?

No one's going to be liable for a paycheck that's late by a few days due to the collapse of the bank through which the paycheck was being wired.

Trick is to be first in the queue, whether that be first in filing for a missed paycheque (because it may not be the last missed), withdrawing funds first from a failing bank, or by regularly processing your payroll before a Friday when everyone else tries to.

Not sure why everyone sticks to payroll on Fridays. It’s not the early/mid 1900s where you have to worry about workers going on payday benders.

> Who will be liable? The employer? Rippling?

To the employee, the employer. To the employer, Rippling. It's wild that, as a payment processor, they didn't have redundant rails.

It's hard to make 100% timeliness guarantees when the courier that's carrying money from one place to another dies on its way. How would they have a redundant courier?

This wouldn’t work in reality, but the only thing I can think of that would work in theory is to send the money close but not all the way at 3x delivery time. Like, to their bank but they don’t give the money to the customer until payday. If it fails, you have time to resend. You can’t just deliver early because that becomes the expectation (ie we get paid on Tuesday). Again, not suggesting this is reality.

> would they have a redundant courier?

Two or more banks. Process through both on a regular basis. Switch if something goes wrong.

That seems like a reasonable precaution, but it doesn't seem clear that would have helped much in this case.

SV bank had the funds this morning and says the paychecks are going out, FDIC comes in at noon Rippling heard that checks haven't gone out in the afternoon, and now JPMorgan has the info and is overnight processing.

It takes a certain amount of time to confirm it went off rails in the first place, no? They're not going to make every payment twice from two different banks and then reverse one after confirming delivery.

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