The Department of Labor says nearly 2,000 Kentuckians have more than $994,000 of wages to be claimed.
Department of Labor Public Affairs Specialist Erika Ruthman says the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division enforces the nation’s labor laws and investigates potential violations, which sometimes reveals money that is owed to workers.
“When they find violations, they recover, sometimes, unpaid wages on behalf of employees,” Ruthman said. “When that agency does so it makes every effort to locate and notify all employees of back ages that are due to them.”
Ruthman says the quickest way to find out if you are one of those workers is to go online.
“All they need to do is go to the Department of Labor’s website, navigate to the Wage and Hour Division, and they’ll find information on Workers Owed Wages, or WOW,” Ruthman said.
The Department of Labor can only hold onto found wages for three years, after which time the money is turned over to the Treasury Department, so it is important to search sooner rather than later.
“It’s best if anybody at all thinks that they might have wages due to them to go ahead and just plug some information into that searchable database WOW on the U.S. Department of Labor’s website so that they can find out if some of that cash might belong to them,” Ruthman said.
Department of Labor data shows that wages have been found for workers in several area communities including Elizabethtown, Bardstown, Radcliff, and Glendale.
