In New York, How Many Hours Per Week Can My Employer In The Investment Banking Industry Make Me Work?
New York State generally does not limit to the number of hours per week that your employer in the investment banking industry may lawfully require you to work. Generally speaking, your investment bank in New York may lawfully require to work as many hours per week as it wishes. However, there are several exceptions to this general rule.
The investment banking industry, long celebrated for its ability to generate immense profits and allure, recently has been subject to scrutiny for its demanding workplace culture. The securities industry’s unyielding pursuit of wealth imposes a heavy toll on junior investment bankers. Investment banking associates and analysts typically work between 80 and 90 hours per week. Nor is it uncommon for junior bankers to toil 100 or more hours per week.
On May 2, 2024, Leo Lukenas, a 35-year-old former Green Beret and associate of Bank of America in New York, tragically and suddenly died of an acute coronary artery thrombosis. Mr. Lukenas was survived by his wife and two children. In mid-March 2024, Mr. Lukenas had inquired with an executive recruiter about finding a new job because he (Mr. Lukenas) was working more than 100 hours per week at Bank of America.
JP Morgan put into place an 80-hour weekly cap for most junior investment bankers. Bank of America, in turn, introduced a new timekeeping tool to monitor work hours more closely.
JP Morgan’s new 80-hour cap on weekly hours of work and Bank of America’s newly rolled out monitoring of excessive work hours, while a positive step, are aspirational and lack the force of law.
Investment banking associates and analysts would be able to legally enforce JP Morgan’s 80-hour cap on weekly work hours only if:
- That 80-hour weekly maximum were set forth in employment agreements between JP Morgan and individual junior bankers; or
- The bank’s 80-hour cap were incorporated into JP Morgan’s code of conduct, and JP Morgan’s code of conduct lacked a disclaimer.
Neither of these circumstances is the case. Most junior investment bankers don’t even have written employment agreements with their employers. JP Morgan has not incorporated the bank’s new 80-hour cap on weekly work hours into JP Morgan’s code of conduct. In any event, JP Morgan’s code of conduct specifies that “The Code does not create any rights to continued employment and is not an employment contract.”
In New York State, there are only two categories of executives or professionals whose work hours are limited by law, and investment bankers are not one of them. First, under the Libby Zion Law, 10 N.Y.C.R.R. § 405.4(b)(6)(ii), and with certain exceptions, hospitals may neither cause medical residents to work more than an average of 80 hours per week over a four-week period nor cause medical residents to work more than 24 consecutive hours.
Second, except where there is a health care disaster or a medical care emergency, health care employers in New York State – including hospitals, nursing homes, diagnostic centers, outpatient clinics, residential facilities, adult day health care programs, and others – may not require nurses to work more than the nurse’s regularly scheduled work hours (“mandatory overtime”). Because most nurses are regularly scheduled to work 40 hours per week, this means that hospitals and other health care employers in New York may not require most nurses to work more than 40 hours per week.
Thus, in New York State and as stated above, there generally is no limit to the number of hours per week that your employer in the investment banking industry may lawfully make you work. However, there are at least three exceptions to this general rule. Where one of these three exceptions applies, you may well be able to obtain, from your investment bank, a reduction in your work hours.
- Religious Observance. Within New York City, all employers, including investment banks, are required to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious observances. In New York City, your employer may not require you to remain at your place of work during any day or days or portion thereof that, as a requirement of your religion, you observe as a sabbath or other holy day.
For example, an investment banker whose religion prohibits him or her from working on the Sabbath – such as an Orthodox Jew or a Seventh-Day Adventist – cannot be required, by his employer, to be present at his or her place of work on that employee’s Sabbath. However, wherever practicable in the judgment of the investment bank, the bank may require the religiously observant investment banker to make up, with an equivalent amount of time at some mutually convenient time, the banker’s absence from work.
- Reasonable Accommodation Of An Employee’s Disability. All employers in New York State, including employers in the financial services industry, must reasonably accommodate their workers’ known disabilities or pregnancy-related conditions. This means that, absent undue hardship, a firm in the securities industry must provide a modified or part-time schedule when required as a reasonable accommodation of an employee’s physical or mental disability or of a worker’s pregnancy-related conditions, even if the firm does not provide such schedules for other employees.
- Intermittent, Unpaid Leave. Under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (the “FMLA”), employers with 50 or more employees, including investment banks, must allow employees to take, and to return to their jobs after taking, as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period for the birth or adoption of a child, to care for a close family member who has a serious health condition, for an employee’s own serious health condition, or when a close family member is called to active military service. When medically necessary, an eligible employee is entitled to take this unpaid leave intermittently or on a part-time basis.
For example, suppose an investment banker requests under the FMLA, of his or her employer, that he or she be excused from work, without pay, for one day per week for a 12-month period. The investment bank must afford, to the employee, the requested, unpaid leave under the FMLA if that leave is medically necessary, even if the leave would be an undue hardship to the bank.
Arbitration panels of The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”) determine the vast majority of Wall Street employment-related disputes. Even if you, an employee in the securities industry, lack a viable cause of action against your brokerage firm for compelling you to work excessive hours, you may have another type of meritorious, employment-related claim against your brokerage firm. At the Law Offices of David S. Rich, LLC, we regularly prosecute and defend, on behalf of employees in the securities industry, these types of FINRA arbitrations against brokerage firms:
- Unpaid Bonus Claims
- Unpaid Commissions Claims
- Wrongful Termination Claims
- Restrictive Covenants
- Promissory Note Cases
- Indemnification and Contribution of Customer Claims
- Form U-5 Expungements
If you are an employee in the securities industry in the New York metro area and you believe that you have been wrongfully terminated, you believe that you’ve been denied salary, bonuses, commissions, or other wages that are owed to you, you are negotiating your employment agreement, you have received, from FINRA, an inquiry letter, or FINRA has brought a formal disciplinary action against you, call New York City Attorney for Securities Industry Professionals David S. Rich at (347) 418-0672 today.
