Am I still entitled to my wages?

Am I still entitled to my wages?

I submitted my letter of resignation on 11/06 and it stated that my last date of employment would be 11/17. Long story short, I was asked to leave on 11/10. The owner of the company walked into my office and said that he thought that it was best that I leave but that he was legally required to pay me for the week that he gave me permission to leave. A few days I was due to be paid, I received a certified letter from him stating that he was going to suspend my pay unless I gave him documents that I deleted from my computer. I can’t give him documents that I don’t have which meant he never had any intentions of paying me in the first place. In my opinion this was his way of getting out of paying me because I did not delete any documents from my computer and have never had any behavior of that sort. I submitted a wage claim detailing what had happened and it was denied because apparently at-will companies are not obligated to pay their employees for time they did not work. I have documentation from the day that I was excused from work that I sent emailed to the owner of the company detailing what he said to me. The email was definitely sent to him maybe 5 minutes after he left my office, it was sent from my work email and I blind copied myself. I never received a reply to that email, however, his letters to me threatening to suspend my pay verifies that there was a conversation that was had in which he told me that he would pay me. However, the wage claim lawyer or representative said that deciphering that is not her job. Her due diligence is to notify the company and to inform me that they are not obligated to pay me and that I would have to take my matter to small wage court. She even said, just to let you know your employers were unaware that they were not obligated to pay you. I worked under HR and received plenty of wage claim letters from other employees, while this may be true that they didn’t know they were not obligated to pay me, I think they were lying. They were just trying to get out of what they said to me. At that moment I felt is though she really did not look into my case because if I were to commit a crime at this very moment, get arrested and say that I was unaware that I could not commit this crime, I would still be sent to jail. Before I get involved with small wage court, I wanted to know if it would be a waste of time.

Asked on December 14, 2017 under Employment Labor Law, Maryland

Answers:

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