The Connecticut Department of Labor has failed to promptly investigate hundreds of complaints of unpaid wages, according to a state auditor’s report released this week.
The report finds that as of May 2023, the labor department had received 843 complaints of unpaid wages that had not been assigned for investigation. One complaint had been left unassigned for 336 days.
The extended delays make it less likely the wages will be collected, the auditors said.
Thomas Wydra, the DOL's workplace director, said the problem is that the department does not have the staff to keep up with the volume of claims.
“We have 16 wage enforcement agents and five wage and hour investigators. And as of this morning we had 970 claims that are in a pending status. That means they have not been assigned yet,” he said.
“That puts us out currently several months, something around eight to 10 months in terms of turnaround on assigning claims from the day they are submitted.”
The department had proposed increasing the number of wage enforcement officers to 45. But the bill failed to pass in the legislature last year. And it failed again this year after lawmakers decided not to make mid-term adjustments to the state’s two-year budget.
