<prompt> Human: My employer is withholding part of my wages due to a mistake in payroll. Its not a large amount but one of my coworkers told me this is illegal in our state North Dakota and hes talking to HR about it because theyre withholding a LARGE portion of his pay for the same reason. The employer calculates wages based on a time card that we have to fill out ourselves and if its not properly saved, approved, and processed by Monday at noon proceeding the pay day Friday- we dont get the pay until the following pay day. So even though I worked the hours during x pay period, I dont get the pay until the next period. Can anyone explain if this is illegal and if so what I should do? My coworker said they could be held liable for this. I tried looking it up in North Dakota labor laws, but I dont understand any of it. Edit to add: wanted to add. Im not trying to bypass HR and seek a different route but my coworker is having a hell of a time with HR. theyve outright hung up on him when hes trying to get info on this. So I thought Id see what PF recommended!Edit2: thanks for the replies! This makes a lot more sense now and I think my coworker is just overreacting then. This is only my third job so I didnt know how common it actually is. Glad I asked here first!  <response>: Unless Im missing something, there doesnt seem to be any mistake on their part. It just seems there is the possibility you missed the deadline to submit your time card. More than likely your company has this deadline in place to ensure they have enough time to process all employees hours and pay out accordingly by Friday.Before I was hired at my current job from temp-to-hire status, the temp agency I worked for had this same schedule of time card deadlines. Maybe there was something you signedagreedacknowledged regarding this policy? Cant really say as to the legality of it in your state, but it all sounds like standard operating procedure to me. 