A Small Victory With Big Benefits

In an effort to avert the many problems associated with identity theft (such as potential misuse and inadvertent disclosure of sensitive, personal information), the New York State Department of Labor (the "Department") has implemented a policy by which contractors may now use only the last four digits of a workers' social security number for certified payroll purposes. While the Department reserves the right to request and receive worker social security numbers in their entirety during public work prevailing wage investigations, it will not insist that they be listed on certified payrolls as a matter of course. This is very good news since identity theft is running rampant. The potentially large benefits to be derived from this seemingly small change in policy should not be underestimated.