r/legaladvice•
nkorner77

[PA] Owner of my workplace wants to garnish staff members' paychecks since some of them stayed the night at a property he is currently renting. Is this allowed, and if not, where do we go from here?

So at my work some of the employee's are part of a program that sets them up with part-time jobs in the U.S. for the summer, designed for English majors from Europe and Asia to get experience with the language. To accommodate them, the owner of this place, we'll call him Dave, owns two houses (one for the guys, one for the girls) that he rents on a lease from May to October. After having seen a copy of the lease, at no point does it say that they can't have people over, or have overnight guests.

This Saturday, they did just that after work, and since the houses are within walking distance of work, some people chose to stay the night.

When owner Dave found out about this, he took two questionable actions that are the focus of my post:

Firstly, he told the guys who hosted that they would be losing their security deposits since some guests parked in the grass, and threatened to (but has not yet acted on it) raise their rent 25-30 dollars per person in the house.

Secondly, he told the four guests who had stayed the night that he would be taking 50 dollars from their next paycheck as a sort of "hotel cost" for staying on his property. Again, the lease the property is currently under does not specify any of this.

Some questions I was hoping to get answered:

  • Since the paychecks were receive at work aren't from any personal account of Owner Dave himself, but from a corporation, is he allowed to garnish from people's paychecks as the owner of this corporation since he is also the owner of the property this whole thing happened on?
  • If not, where should I be looking to report and stop this?

Thanks a ton in advance

Posted Jun 26, 2017, 8:47 PM UTC

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