How do you get paid? By check? Direct deposit? Cash (under the table – shhhhh)? These are all legitimate ways to be paid for your work nowadays. Heck, direct deposit has been our method of choice for the past 20 years. But have you ever been paid by debit card?

That’s what happened to Natalie Gunshannon last month. The 27-year-old mother of one, took a job at the Dallas, Pennsylvania branch of McDonald’s in April. On May 15th, she received wages for her first pay period. But inside her pay envelope, instead of a check, she found a Chase Bank debit card. The accompanying note said that her future earnings would be deposited in this account and she could access it with the card. For a fee. That’s right, she would have to pay a fee to access the money she earned.

Gunshannon did not sign the card and, when she next returned to work, asked her supervisor about it and if she could instead be paid via check or direct deposit. She was told she had no other option but the debit card. She went to the franchise owners but was given the same reply. So she quit the job, which paid $7.44 an hour (19 cents more than minimum wage), and filed a lawsuit.

I know, I know – this “sue happy” country… But this is, in my view, a legitimate suit. For one thing, Pennsylvania law says (PDF) that employees are to be paid on a regular basis via “lawful money of the United States or check.” The franchisees are not compliant with Pennsylvania labor laws. Further, the use of a corporate debit card to pay employees places fees between them and their legitimate earnings. The fees range from 75 cents to pay a bill online to $5.00 for withdrawing cash over the counter to $15.00 for a lost or stolen card. An ATM transaction to withdraw wages is $1.50! I am curious as to how much of that the franchise owners get in kick-backs.

Mike Cefalo, the lawyer for Gunshannon – and anyone else who joins this class action suit – contends that that the franchisee is earning “ill-gotten gains contrary to justice, equity, good conscience and Pennsylvania law.” Not only that, but they are technically paying employees less than their wage when fees are figured in. That is certainly how Gunshannon sees it:

“I need to receive all the money I earn. I can’t afford to lose even a few dollars per paycheck. I just think people should be paid fairly and not have to pay fees to get their wages.”

Cefalo sees this as yet another example of corporate greed. How can it be anything else? Do you think that the franchisees just arbitrarily decided to pay their employees in this fashion? Certainly there are companies who provide pre-paid cards for paying employees that don’t charge them fees to withdraw their funds. Why go with Chase? Let’s just say that I’m suspicious.

The folks over at The Consumerist, together with the Consumers Union, the National Consumer Law Center and industry group the Electronic Payroll Coalition, have put together a list of things that you should know if you are, or may be in the future, paid via debit card. It’s a trend that certainly favors the employer, especially since it takes the costs associated with payroll out of their hands. But it also takes choices and, more importantly, earnings out of the hands of the people who make those businesses work. Employees make this country run: from the postal clerk to the 7-11 clerk we all rely on one another to keep the economy moving. The owners would make nothing without their employees. It would behoove them to remember that.