Topic
Pay, hours, and wage theft
Minimum wage, tips, deductions, breaks, overtime, the wage notice, commissions, and the last paycheck.
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16 guides
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Just fired
Minnesota's Commission Statute Is Written for Independent Contractors — If You Were an Employee, § 181.145 Is Not Your Section
Minn. Stat. § 181.145 gives a terminated commission salesperson payment in three working days, a penalty of one-fifteenth of the unpaid commissions per day, and attorney fees. Subdivision 1 defines a commission salesperson as a person "not covered by sections 181.13 and 181.14 because the person is an independent contractor." Employees paid on commission are on the other statute, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals has held it is error to mix them.
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Your Last Paycheck in Minnesota: The 24-Hour Clock Does Not Start Until You Demand It in Writing
Minn. Stat. § 181.13 makes a discharged employee's earned wages due immediately on written demand, with the employer in default 24 hours later and a penalty of average daily earnings for up to 15 days. An employer may not hold that check hostage to an unreturned laptop.
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Minnesota Has One Minimum Wage for Every Employer, and No Employer May Take a Tip Credit Against It
Since January 1, 2025 Minnesota has a single minimum-wage rate — $11.41 an hour as of January 1, 2026, rising to $11.87 on January 1, 2027 — with no small-employer rate and no youth rate except a 90-day training wage for workers under 20. Minn. Stat. § 177.24, subd. 2, forbids an employer to credit gratuities toward the minimum wage at all.
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Your Tips Are Your Sole Property Under Minnesota Law, and a Service Charge Is a Tip Unless the Customer Was Told Otherwise in Bold Type
Minn. Stat. § 177.24, subd. 3, makes a gratuity "the sole property of the employee" and bars an employer from requiring you to share it. Since August 1, 2024 the full amount of a card tip must reach you with no swipe-fee deduction. And § 177.23, subd. 9, makes an obligatory service charge a gratuity unless the employer gave the customer clear and conspicuous notice that it is not.
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Minnesota Bars Your Employer From Docking Your Pay for Breakage, a Cash Shortage, or a Claimed Debt Unless You Authorized It in Writing After the Loss
Minn. Stat. § 181.79 makes the deduction unlawful without a voluntary written authorization given after the loss occurred, voids any agreement to the contrary, and makes the employer liable for twice the amount taken. Section 181.06 lists what a written authorization can cover, § 177.24, subd. 4, caps uniform and equipment deductions at $50, and § 181.145 turns out not to cover employees at all.
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Minnesota's Payday Rule Is 31 Days, and the Penalty the Commissioner Can Collect for Late Wages Has No 15-Day Ceiling — the Legislature Deleted It in 2019
Minn. Stat. § 181.101 requires wages every 31 days and commissions every three months, and lets the commissioner of labor and industry serve a demand that starts a per-day penalty ten days later. The 15-day cap that §§ 181.13 and 181.14 carry was struck out of § 181.101 in 2019. Four other sections of chapter 181 set their own paydays, and two of them take the penalty away.
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Minnesota's break rules got numbers on January 1, 2026 — and being salaried is not what makes you exempt from overtime
Since January 1, 2026 Minnesota requires a rest break of at least 15 minutes within each four consecutive hours worked and a 30-minute meal break at six consecutive hours, each with its own liquidated-damages remedy. Minnesota's overtime threshold is 48 hours a week; the federal threshold is 40.
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Wage Theft Is a Named Crime in Minnesota and the Felony Line Sits at $1,000 — but Nothing in Chapter 177 or Chapter 181 Refers Your Case to a Prosecutor
Minn. Stat. § 609.52, subd. 2(a)(19), makes wage theft a theft offense, subd. 1(3) measures its value as the gap between what was reported or paid and what was owed, and subd. 3 grades it from a 90-day misdemeanor to a 20-year felony. A word search of chapters 177 and 181 turns up no wage-theft referral provision, the criminal clock is three years, and a restitution order is not a bar to the employee's own civil action.
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Salary Is One of Three Federal Tests, Not the Test — and the Federal Salary Level Is Back at $684 a Week Because Two Courts Vacated the 2024 Rule
29 C.F.R. part 541 requires a salary level, a salary basis, and a duties test, and a job title satisfies none of them. The current level is $684 per week: the Department of Labor removed the vacated 2024 rule from the Code of Federal Regulations by technical amendment effective May 15, 2026. Minnesota runs a separate exemption on its own rules, whose salary floors are $250, $170, and $155 a week.
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Waiting, Call Time, and Cleaning Time Are Hours Worked in Minnesota — and Under Federal Law the Question Is Whether the Employer Knew, Not Whether It Approved
Minn. R. 5200.0120 counts training, call, cleaning, and waiting time as hours worked and bars deducting rest periods under 20 minutes. 29 C.F.R. §§ 785.11 to 785.13 make work the employer knows about compensable whether or not it was requested. Travel is governed by the Portal-to-Portal Act, 29 U.S.C. § 254, and the records duty is the employer's under Minn. Stat. § 177.30 and 29 U.S.C. § 211(c).
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Minnesota Puts Your Rate of Pay in a Signed Document at the Start of Employment — and Gives You Three Ways to Enforce It
Minn. Stat. § 181.032 requires a signed start-of-employment notice with nine items and an earnings statement with twelve, every pay period. Section 181.171 lets you sue directly with mandatory attorney fees; § 177.27 lets the Department of Labor and Industry order back pay plus an equal amount in liquidated damages.
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Minnesota Bans the Salary-History Question and Requires a Pay Range in the Posting — but the Two Rules Sit in Different Chapters and Only One of Them Names a Remedy
Minn. Stat. § 363A.08, subd. 8, forbids an employer to inquire into, consider, or require disclosure of an applicant's pay history, and reaches every employer with one or more employees. Minn. Stat. § 181.173 requires a salary range in every job posting, but only for employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota — and the section names no remedy of its own.
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Signing a 1099 agreement does not make you a contractor in Minnesota — being asked to sign one is itself a violation
Minn. Stat. § 181.722, subd. 3, decides employment status by the workers' compensation and unemployment insurance tests, not by the paperwork. Subdivision 1(a)(3) makes it a separate violation to require or request an employee to sign a document that misclassifies them, and the 2024 rewrite removed the scienter element the old section contained.
Read the guideLeaving
No Minnesota Statute Creates a Right to Cash Out Unused PTO — the Answer Is in the Policy's Own Words, and the Supreme Court Said So in 2007
Minn. Stat. § 181.13 and § 181.14 fix when a final paycheck is due, not what has to be in it. The Minnesota Supreme Court held in Lee v. Fresenius Medical Care that paid time off is wages for purposes of § 181.13(a) and that the statute still does not create the entitlement. One statute does reach a promised vacation benefit — § 181.74, a gross misdemeanor — and neither it nor § 181.171 supplies a private civil action. Earned sick and safe time is answered expressly, and the answer is no.
Read the guideBringing a claim
Conciliation Court Is a Division of the District Court, Not a Lesser One — and Its $20,000 Ceiling and Eleven Exclusions Decide Which Employment Claims Fit
Minn. Stat. ch. 491A establishes a conciliation court division in every county with jurisdiction over civil claims up to $20,000. The filing fee is $65, there is no jury and no court reporter, and eleven categories of claim are excluded by statute — including defamation and injunctive relief.
Read the guideBringing a claim
The Department of Labor and Industry Can Order Double Back Pay; Your Own Lawsuit Gets Mandatory Attorney Fees — and the Two Routes Do Not Cover the Same Statutes
Minn. Stat. § 177.27 gives the commissioner of labor and industry investigation powers, a compliance order that becomes final in 15 days, and a remedy of back pay plus an equal amount as liquidated damages. Minn. Stat. § 181.171 and § 177.27, subd. 8, are two separate private actions reaching two different lists of sections, and only one of them carries liquidated damages. Neither route stops the two-year clock in § 541.07(5).
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Nothing on this page is advice about your job, and no article can be. If you want your own facts looked at, a Minnesota employment attorney can do that — and several of the deadlines described on this site are short enough that waiting is itself a decision.