House cleaners, caregivers and nannies in New York can pursue unpaid wages going back six years — including work paid in cash and performed without a written agreement. Domestic workers are covered by the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which guarantees overtime pay and one full rest day each week.
This is one of the quietest problems in the immigrant labor market. Thousands of women — and it is mostly women — clean New York homes, care for seniors and look after other people’s children, working inside a private apartment, without witnesses, for cash agreed on verbally. When the employer starts paying late, cuts hours or simply disappears owing several thousand dollars, the worker usually lets it go. Who would she even report it to, and how do you prove something nobody saw?
New York law, however, treats work in a private home exactly like any other work — with a full right to wages, to overtime and to protection from retaliation. More than that, domestic workers have a dedicated statute granting additional entitlements. This guide sets out what is actually owed, how to document work performed behind closed doors, and why the calendar rewards those who do not wait.
What rights does a house cleaner or caregiver have in New York?
The foundation is the same as for every other worker: the right to the agreed rate for every hour worked, at no less than the minimum wage, and to time-and-a-half for overtime. New York then goes further. The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, in force since 2010, covers nannies, caregivers and housekeepers working in private homes, guaranteeing paid overtime, one full day of rest per week, and paid days off after a year with the same employer. The details are published by the New York State Department of Labor.
For live-in caregivers the rules set a separate overtime threshold, and disputes frequently turn on which hours of the day count as work — because sitting up with a sick patient at night often does. That sounds technical, and it is, but it is also where the money is: the difference between being paid “by the day” and being paid by the hour becomes enormous over the span of years.
What an employer may not do matters just as much. Wages cannot be docked for alleged breakage without consent, pay cannot fall below the minimum on the theory that room and board make up the difference, and a worker cannot be fired in retaliation for asking to be paid what she is owed. Immigration status has no bearing on any of this — wage claims belong to workers without work authorization as well. New Jersey, where many Polish women work around Wallington and Garfield, adopted its own domestic workers’ bill of rights in 2024.
Nor does the label the parties used carry much weight. “Help by the hour,” “care as a favor,” a settlement handled “like an independent contractor” — rights are determined by how the work was actually structured, not by what it was called. When the employing family or agency sets the hours, the place and the manner of performing the duties, the wage statutes generally apply in full.
How much can be recovered, and how do you calculate it without records?
New York permits wage claims reaching back six years — one of the longest lookback periods in the country. Underpaid hours, unpaid overtime, work below the minimum wage, plus statutory liquidated damages and interest all enter the calculation. No honest lawyer will quote a figure up front; the result depends on the number of weeks, the gap between the agreed and the lawful rate, and the quality of the documentation.
Documentation, then. Work in a private home rarely leaves pay stubs, but it leaves traces: text and messenger threads (“I’ll pay you Friday, I promise”), commuting history in a phone, a calendar with hours written in, Zelle or Venmo transfers covering some of the period, testimony from others working in the same household. New York courts have long accepted that where the employer kept no records, a credible reconstruction of hours by the worker herself can carry the day — and it falls to the employer to rebut it.
The cost of bringing a claim should stop nobody. Wage cases are handled on a contingency fee — nothing up front, with the fee paid from what is recovered. In many wage matters the statutes additionally allow attorney’s fees to be shifted onto the losing party, which changes the arithmetic of the negotiation considerably.
There is also a practical point about how such cases begin. A demand letter setting out the hours, the rate and the amount owed frequently resolves the matter before anything is filed. Employers who assumed nobody would ever count the hours tend to reconsider once someone has.
Free and confidential consultation about unpaid wages, in Polish or English: 347-563-2605
Why these cases sit in a drawer for years
First, relationships. Cleaning and caregiving are jobs that come by referral: the employing family knows a cousin, a neighbor, mutual friends from Greenpoint or Ridgewood. Asking to be paid looks, inside that web, like severing a social tie rather than collecting a debt. Second, shame, and the belief that “this is just how it works here.” Third, fear about immigration status — which, as it happens, has no effect on the claim at all.
There is a fourth reason: not knowing that the debt grows and then expires. A six-year window looks like a distant horizon, but it works like a conveyor belt — every month, the oldest weeks of work fall off the end and are gone. Someone waiting for a better moment is, in effect, handing the employer another paycheck every month.
Fear of retaliation runs through all of it: “if I say something, she’ll tell everyone and nobody will hire me.” The law knows that dynamic. Retaliation against a worker for pursuing wages is itself a violation and can enlarge the claim rather than close it down.
Domestic work cases have one more feature: events overlap. A caregiver who lifts a patient may also be injured on the job, which opens separate claims governed by their own clocks — set out in our guide to filing deadlines in New York and New Jersey. And where the unpaid work happened on a construction site, the principles are similar and equally indifferent to paperwork, as we explain in our guide to the rights of construction workers paid in cash.
What to look for when choosing a lawyer for a wage case
- Experience with domestic worker claims. Live-in hours, night shifts and time spent on call beside a patient form a distinctive body of law. The attorney should know both the Labor Law and the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, and be able to explain how they interact.
- The ability to build a case without records. A capable firm reconstructs an employment history from messages, calendars and testimony instead of sending the client away to find pay stubs that never existed.
- Discretion and an understanding of the setting. A claim against a family you were referred to requires tact. The conversation with an attorney is confidential, and the strategy can be built to start with negotiation rather than a lawsuit.
- No fees up front. The contingency arrangement should be set out in writing: fee only on recovery, free consultation, and clear rules on who advances case expenses.
- Direct contact in your own language. Rates, hours and verbal promises have to be conveyed precisely. Translation “by someone in the family” is a short road to misunderstandings that end up in a sworn statement.
Jodré Brenecki, LLP, in Williamsburg, handles unpaid wage cases on exactly these terms — read the firm’s profile and client reviews.
Three mistakes that weaken a wage claim the most
The first is deleting messages. Threads containing promises to pay, agreements about hours or the employer’s own complaints are often the strongest evidence in the file, and erasing them in a moment of anger is usually irreversible. The second is accepting partial payments “to keep the peace” without a receipt and without stating in writing that this covers only part of the debt. Otherwise that payment reappears later as proof of a full settlement.
Watch out too for payment “in kind” — lodging, meals or old furniture offered instead of money. The rules for crediting such items against wages are tightly regulated, and an employer cannot value them at will, least of all retroactively once a claim appears.
The third mistake is giving up after the first refusal. “I don’t have the money right now” is not a legal answer; it is a tactic for running out the clock. The longer the wait, the more weeks of work drop out of the six-year window and the harder witnesses become to find.
Placement agencies deserve a separate word. Some workers formally “belong” to a cleaning or home-care agency that collects a fee from the family and pays the worker the remainder. When the money stops arriving, responsibility may rest with the agency and, in certain arrangements, with the family receiving the services as well. Identifying who counts as the employer under the statutes is one of the first tasks for a lawyer, and often the turning point of the case.
Behind work in someone else’s home stands the same bargain as behind work in a Manhattan office tower: wages for every hour. New York gives domestic workers genuine tools — statutory overtime, a guaranteed rest day, a six-year lookback. They only have to be used before time does its work.
Ask for an assessment of your own situation — the call is free and confidential: 347-563-2605
Every situation is different — this guide is for general information only and is not legal advice. Attorney Advertising. Consult a licensed attorney about your individual case.
