Employers are required to pay their workers overtime, but they don't always do so. The Department of Labor wants to ensure they do.
A top priority of the agency is to conduct compliance checks to ensure employees get what they're owed by calculating back wages. Betty Campbell with the Wage and Hour division says if they find an employers has shorted workers, they give the business an invoice and order them to reach out to those employees and pay up. The problem is in many times "the workers are transient. We have a lot of low wage workers who move on and employers cannot locate these individuals to pay them the back wages."
Those back wages are then turned over the the Department of Labor. After three years the money is turned over to the US Treasury. There is a website you can go to if you think you're owed money.
There is about $8 million in back wages unclaimed in Texas for 12,400 workers. Nationally $100 million is unclaimed.
She emphasizes this isn't free money. "This money is due to them. We want to give them what's rightfully theirs."
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