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Kansas Wage Recovery Update

March 2nd, 2007 Posted by Mark

The Kansas Department of Labor has announced that it has recovered more than $1.9 million in unpaid wages for Kansas employees just in the last year. They have also gotten more than 1400 wage claims last year from employees, including one huge claim of 166 employees from just one employer.

What does this mean for Kansas employers? That means the Department of Labor in the state of Kansas is out there enforcing its labor laws, so all employers in the state be forewarned that you should have the proper federal and state labor law posters in your offices, and make sure to follow what those posters say too.

That one large employer that got hit with the 166 employee claims was AO Smith. Those claims against it resulted in $950,000 in back wages, interest, and penalties that the company had to pay up to the state, which then funneled some of that money back to some of those employees. The Kansas Court of Appeals had to even get involved in the dispute and come up with that resolution. Those figures represent the biggest such pay back by a company since the state of Kansas enacted its Kansas Wage Payment Act of 1973.

The whole issue stems from a time back in 2001 when the AO Smith in Kansas had been sold, and employees there claimed that they had never received back pay for earned vacation time that they were owed. That means that they had unused vacation days when the plant was closed, and under Kansas law, if it the policy of the company, then these workers should have received money for those unused vacation days.

What is the take home message from this case—Kansas is going to uphold its wage and labor laws, so employers should be familiar with them, along with the obvious conclusion that they should also make sure they are following them too.