A worker clocks in in this file photo. Federal officials and advocates say that failure to pay hours worked, overtime, or for work performed pre-shift or post-shift are among the most common reasons workers are denied wages they are owed. Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.
The federal government is trying to reunite 5,243 workers in Maryland with more than $6.8 million in unpaid wages it says they are owed. All the workers have to do is ask.
U.S. Department of Labor officials are encouraging workers who think they may be owed money for hours they clocked but weren’t paid for, for overtime they didn’t collect — for any reason — to check out the department’s Workers Owed Wages, or WOW, database to see if the agency has money for them.
“We collect back wages for folks that didn’t get paid … properly,” said Nick Fiorello, the Baltimore District director of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.
Fiorello said the wage and hour division will investigate complaints from workers who think they have been wronged, or it can initiate an investigation of a company on its own. But once it collects back wages from an employer, he said, “We’re only able to keep the wages for three years and then we have to pass it on to the Treasury.” Which is why the department is encouraging people to make checking the database part of their year-end routine.
Fiorello said the workers most often victimized by unpaid wage violations are those in low-wage industries, construction workers and those in building services, such as security guards or custodial workers. That was echoed by Lucy Zhou, an attorney with the Public Justice Center in Baltimore, who said those affected are often the workers who are least able to fight back on their own.
“They don’t have the money to pay for lawyers, or they have … substantially justified fears of retaliation if they were to speak up against their employers, or fears about immigration status,” Zhou said. “There are a whole myriad of reasons why a worker wouldn’t speak out about it.”
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She said the millions currently being held by the Labor Department is likely only a fraction of what workers in Maryland are owed — what advocates are more likely to refer to as “wage theft” — pointing to a 2016 report by the Center for Popular Democracy that estimated that as many as 580,000 workers in the state could be denied as much as $875 million a year that they are owed under the law.
“It’s a really difficult problem to quantify in some ways, because so much wage theft goes undected and unreported for a variety of reasons,” she said.
Fiorello said his office investigates violations of child labor laws, of the Family Medical Leave Act and others, but that most of its complaints involve violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs minimum wage, overtime, regulations for tipped workers, and more.
In addition to those, Zhou said her office often sees workers who are pressured to do work off the clock, such as pre- or post-shift setup or cleanup, or those who are not compensated for travel time for work. But she said one of the biggest problems is misclassification of workers as contractors, which allows employers to skirt wage and hour laws, workers’ compensation, leave requirements and more.
Even if a worker has been pressured to sign on as an independent contractor, they should come forward, Zhou said, since those agreements are often not enforceable. Courts have found that it “doesn’t matter what it says on a piece of paper, it’s the reality of the situation” that matters, she said.
“Was this person actually an employee, such that they’re subject to the control of their employer? The employer is the one dictating when they show up, how they do they do the work. The employer’s the one providing the tools in order to do the work,” she said. “That person … is properly classified as an employee versus an independent contractor who’s in business for themselves.”
Neither Zhou nor Fiorello was able to compare the problem in Maryland to other states, or to say whether the problem is getting better or worse. But both encouraged workers to reach out to the state or federal Labor departments, to an attorney or to advocacy groups like the Public Justice Center for help if they think they have been wronged by their employer.
Zhou said it is still to soon to determine the impact, but her office is optimistic about a new law in Maryland that took effect Oct. 1. The pay stub transparency law spells out a specific list of information that employers are required to provide each pay period, including hours worked, pay rate, cost and reasons for deductions, and more.
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While that law shakes out, she said, workers who think they have a claim should continue to keep as many documents as they can, including pay stubs, photos of any contracts they may have been pressured to sign ad more. That is true for undocumented workers as well, she said: Regardless of their documented status, “those workers have rights under federal and state law to be paid for the work they have performed.”
Fiorello said workers can check the WOW database to see if they are owed money or for directions on how to file a claim. He said workers can also ask questions or ask for an investigation by calling the Wage and Hour Division’s nationwide toll-free number, in English or Spanish, at 866-487-9243 during regular business hours.
Because an investigation of a company can take several years to resolve, workers should still check the database even if it’s been years since they worked in a job where they think they are owed wages. All that’s required to start the process in the database is the employer’s name and the worker’s name.
Zhou said there are lots of resources for workers who think they’ve been wronged.
“We do encourage folks to reach out to the Maryland Department of Labor or the U.S. Department of Labor, and then we always say, you know, we at the Public Justice Center can be a resource, or speaking to any attorney to try to figure out whether their wage rights have been violated and what they can do about it,” Zhou said.