Court Opinion

ID: 9696799
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:59:00.762583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:38.708914
License: Public Domain

CALKINS, J.,
dissenting.
[¶24] I concur in Part III-A of the opinion holding that 26 M.R.S.A § 626-A does not provide employees a private right of action against their employers to collect forfeitures.7 I believe that Larrabee v. Penobscot Frozen Foods, Inc., 486 A.2d 97 (Me.1984) compels that holding. I also concur in Parts IV, V, and VI concerning the employees’ minimum wage, unjust enrichment, and Federal Fair Labor Standards Act claims. I respectfully dissent in Part III-B because I conclude that 26 M.R.S.A. §§ 621 and 626-A granted employees, who were entitled to be paid weekly and were not paid weekly, the right to bring an action to collect their unpaid wages.
[¶25] I start with the requirement in section 621 that the employers in this case were to have paid their employees weekly. No one in this litigation disputes that basic premise. The disagreement is whether the employees can enforce their statutory right by bringing an action to collect those wages not paid weekly.
*226[¶ 26] In interpreting the statutes, I note the fact that sections 621 and 626-A were remedial wage statutes, obviously intended to remedy problems faced by low-wage workers living from paycheck to paycheck. We have said that such statutes must be construed liberally. See Director of Bureau of Labor Standards v. Cormier, 527 A.2d 1297, 1300 (Me.1987).
[¶ 27] Section 626-A allows an employee to bring an action for unpaid wages. The statute, as it was worded at the time these actions were filed, implicitly referred to violations of section 621, as well as other statutory provisions, as a basis for an action for unpaid wages, by referring to those sections in the first paragraph. The opinion concludes that the wages of these employees were not “unpaid,” that they were merely “late,” in spite of the fact that the statutory scheme makes no distinction between “late” wages and “unpaid” wages. In fact, there is no mention in the statutes of “late” wages.
[1128] The opinion decides that wages are “unpaid” in two situations: (1) when an employer fails to pay an employee after employment is terminated and the employee has made a demand for the wages, and (2) when an employer fails to pay the employee on the payday following the payday when the wages were due. We are not concerned with the former situation because we are not dealing with terminated employees.
[1129] The opinion determines, with regard to current employees, that wages are “unpaid” only when not paid on the payday after the payday on which they are due. The only portion of the statutory scheme that allowed payment on the next payday was section 621(2). That section stated that an employer “shall pay to its employee, on or before the employee’s next regularly scheduled payday, the balance of the employee’s earned hourly wages due to be paid which were not paid on the date normally scheduled for payment of those wages.” The section assumed a regularly scheduled payday at which time employees were generally paid what was due them. Common sense dictates that if an employer was required to pay its employees weekly, the employer must have established a weekly payday. In section 621(2) the Legislature was not authorizing employers, required to pay weekly, to establish a regularly scheduled payday on a biweekly or monthly basis, or on any basis other than a weekly basis. Yet, that is exactly what the employers in this case did: they established a biweekly regular payday for their employees whom the employers were required to pay weekly.
[¶ 30] Section 621(2) simply dealt with the nonrecurring situation of wages not paid on the regularly scheduled payday, and it required the employer to pay on the next payday. In fact, section 621(2) further stated that it “shall not be construed to permit nonpayment or withholding of payment of wages when due.” The opinion allows employers to ignore the weekly payment requirement so long as they pay their employees by the next regularly scheduled payday, whenever it is. Such a result was not authorized by the plain meaning of the statute, and, therefore, it was not what the Legislature intended.
[¶ 31] The opinion suggests that an employer who established a biweekly payday for its employees, who were supposed to be paid weekly, did so at the employer’s peril because the Department of Labor could have sought a forfeiture against the employer. If the Department, however, failed to enforce the weekly pay requirement, employees were without a remedy if they were not allowed to bring an action for the unpaid wages.8
*227[¶ 32] I conclude that the plain meaning of sections 621 and 626-A required employers to pay wages to these employees weekly, and, when the wages were not paid weekly, they were unpaid. The employees are entitled to proceed with their statutory remedy for unpaid wages. For this reason I would vacate the dismissal of the employees’ claims for unpaid wages.

. In this dissent, I refer to the versions of 26 M.R.S.A. §§ 621 and 626-A in effect at the time the complaints were filed. See 26 M.R.S.A. §§ 621 and 626-A (1988 & Supp. 1998). As noted in the opinion, section 621 was repealed by P.L.1999, ch. 465, § 1, and section 626-A was amended by P.L.1999, ch. 465, § 1 (see 26 M.R.S.A. § 626-A (Supp. 2000)).

. “Every person, for an injury done him in his person, reputation, property or immunities, shall have remedy by due course of law; and right and justice shall be administered freely and without sale, completely and without denial, promptly and without delay.” Maine Const. art. I, § 19.