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Comment by sachingulaya | Hacker News Reader

It's not an ugly fight. You file with your labor board. They hold a hearing. There's no lawyers involved. The state will collect a penalty for every day late they were in paying you.

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> You file with your labor board.

Excuse my ignorance, but there was no union involved far as I can tell. What does this comment mean?

Nothing to do with unions, that's a reference to the state labor board that oversees the labor laws. Basically, if you are someone's employee with an agreement that you will do work for compensated, but then do not receive the compensation, the state can help get your wages.

Here's Colorado's, the states are all similar:

http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?c=Page&cid=12493913...

Since he was a contractor, not an employee, labor laws may not apply.

PLus the aspect that he doesn't have citizenship

I think WalterBright was responding to what I wrote about my own experience. I think you are talking about the Inc article, where Shaikh lacked citizenship.

Citizenship is utterly irrelevant to labour law and, for that matter, most other legal issues. Even legality of presence is usually irrelevant.

Labor laws are not restricted to citizens or employees. Anyone who performs "labor" for someone else is protected by labor laws. However, some types of labor laws (such as overtime restrictions or worker's comp for injuries) may be limited to specific types of workers.

Yes, as someone else said, I was a contractor, so I don't think the labor board has any influence over this

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