A new law recently passed in the Israeli parliament has determined that employers who fail to pay their employees payroll on time, will be considered to have committed a criminal offense.
Worker’s unions have expressed hope that this new law will help curtail employers taking advantage of employees by repeatedly delaying payments of payroll and social benefits.
The law states that pay for the period ending on the last day of the month needs to be paid by the first of the following month, but this is not enforced until the 10th of the month.
(This basically means that employers can pay on the 9th and not be violators of the law).
Many employers, especially in the private sector use this as an excuse and pay on the 9th on a continuous basis. They say that it is difficult, if not impossible to process payroll in one day. For those employers that want to pay on the 1st of the month, there are creative ways around it but it really comes down to the employer’s willingness to want to pay on time.
Some employers just do not care. After all, how many employees are willing to take their employer to court and risk losing their job ?
The new law gives the Minister of Trade, Industry and Labor the power to issue a warning or fine of 35,000 shekels to violating employers. The minister can even increase the fine for each additional day that payroll isn’t paid. For repeating offenders the fine can double itself.
The minister is also empowered with the ability to press criminal charges when the delay of payroll payment is 90 days or more and in such cases the court can send the employer to prison for half a year.
The above is not in place of an employee filing a complaint with the labor court. The ministry has a department that deals with enforcement against employers who fail to comply with the law.
Anyone can leave information anonymously on the ministry’s hotline voice mail and each case will be looked into by the authorities.
The hotline number is: 1-800-354-354
