Back wages totaling more than $5 million owed to thousands of Illinois
workers
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[January 20, 2024] By ALEX ABBEDUTO
Capitol News Illinois
abbeduto@capitolnewsillinois.com
The U.S. Department of Labor is currently holding more than $5 million
in wages owed to more than 7,000 Illinois workers, and the department
has launched a new website in an effort to return it.
When an employee is underpaid for the work they do, the DOL’s Wage and
Hour Division can launch an investigation. If it finds that the employee
is owed money, known as back pay, the department collects the unpaid
wages and attempts to distribute it to the employee.
The new Workers Owed Wages website attempts to connect workers with
potential unclaimed back pay.
“As you can imagine, sometimes the workers have moved or their addresses
aren’t known and therefore, those are the workers, we term unlocatables,
that we search for based on the best information we can. But sometimes
we are unable to locate them,” Tom Gauza, district director of the U.S.
Department of Labor, said.
The Department of Labor can only hold employees’ back pay for three
years. After that it is turned over to the Department of Treasury and
the employee can no longer claim it. The department also cannot send
money to people using tax filing information received each year since
not all employees have social security numbers or live at their listed
addresses, Gauza said.
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(Credit: US Department of Labor/https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/)
“It’s important if they are looking to see if they are owed money that
they check the WOW system, and that’s why we’re trying to get the
message out,” Gauza said.
Across the country over 222,000 workers can still claim more than $161.4
million in back wages, according to the Department of Labor. Gauza said
the most common industries in which the department investigates and
finds unpaid wages are restaurant, home health care, agriculture and
construction.
Workers who think they are due back wages can go to the Workers Owed
Wages website and follow the instructions on the main page to search the
database. It is available in English and Spanish. If a worker finds they
are owed money, they will be directed to a Department of Labor office
that can send them a check. Gauza said employees can also claim wages
regardless of their immigration status.
Capitol News Illinois is
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funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R.
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