Sent home from a NY construction job? You're owed up to 4 hours' pay

If you work construction in New York, showing up for a shift that gets called off will cost your boss real money starting December 8, 2026. If your employer asks you to come in, or lets you, and then sends you home, you get up to four hours’ pay at the wage you were promised. If your scheduled shift was shorter than four hours, you get pay for the whole shift. On covered prevailing-wage projects, the floor is four hours at the prevailing rate, including benefits. If your shift is canceled with less than 12 hours’ notice, you get two hours’ pay at the promised or prevailing rate.

You don’t have to apply. The money counts as wages, so you can recover it the same way you’d recover any unpaid wages, through the state Labor Department or in court.

The old call-in rule paid covered workers up to four hours at minimum wage. Most construction jobs pay far more than that, so sending a crew home was still cheap for employers. State Sen. Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz carried the bill. It passed the Assembly 125–14 and the Senate 50–10 in June 2026, and Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it on September 9, 2026. The sponsors’ memo says it doesn’t cost the state anything.