Chapter 12 covered how a notice of determination is delivered — in person or by certified mail, with a refused certified delivery deemed received on the date it was attempted — and what the employer must file to contest it. This section covers the other half: what the notice itself is required to say. The two are separate requirements, and an employer reading a notice is entitled to find all of this in the one document.

The notice must set forth the determination of the Administrator (the Wage and Hour Division official at the U.S. Department of Labor who determines and issues the penalty) as to the penalty amount and the reason or reasons behind it, so the employer can see exactly what the assessment is for rather than only what it costs. It must also set forth the employer’s right to take exception (formally object to the determination) to that assessment and to request a hearing on it, and it must spell out the time and method for doing so. None of this is left for the employer to infer — the notice is required to lay out the path to a hearing in the same document that announces the penalty.

The notice must also carry an explicit warning: if the employer does not take timely exception and request a hearing within 15 days of receiving the notice, the determination becomes final and unappealable. That warning is not decoration. An employer that lets those 15 days pass without taking exception finds the Administrator’s determination deemed final and not subject to either administrative or judicial review — at that point, collection and recovery of the penalty moves forward. The written notice is, in effect, the employer’s one clearly marked window to be heard before the determination hardens into something no court or agency will revisit.