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How do I collect the wages and penalties from my past employer that were awarded CA?

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avatara359

Junior Member
My past employer owes me 16k in sallary, he kept promising he would pay and never did. The State of California employment office ruled in my favor for an additional 16k in penalties, for a total of 32k. The employment office said they put a lien on the company, but the unemployment office never contacted me again. I've left messages for the unemployment office but they've never responded. This was two years ago and the company has been abandoned (an LLC). The company was apparently also sued by the clients. He occasioanlly promises to pay me what I'm owed but never follows through. What are my options to collect the money owed to me?

Collecting on owed wages is apparently a common enough problem but my research suggests that most of those wages are never collected. The employers just ignore the dept.
 
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LdiJ

Senior Member
My past employer owes me 16k in sallary, he kept promising he would pay and never did. The State of California employment office ruled in my favor for an additional 16k in penalties, for a total of 32k. The employment office said they put a lien on the company, but the unemployment office never contacted me again. I've left messages for the unemployment office but they've never responded. This was two years ago and the company has been abandoned (an LLC). The company was apparently also sued by the clients. He occasioanlly promises to pay me what I'm owed but never follows through. What are my options to collect the money owed to me?

Collecting on owed wages is apparently a common enough problem but my research suggests that most of those wages are never collected. The employers just ignore the dept.
Unfortunately if the company is no longer working/active your odds of collecting are slim to none.
 

commentator

Senior Member
Did the State Department of Labor determine that your employer owed you back wages and overtime payments? Or did they, as it almost sounds, determine that you were misclassified or something and no employer taxes were withheld on you? If that is true, there'd be no way you'd be recouped for the money, you'd draw unemployment benefits from the state's general pool, which you may have done, and then they're responsible for getting the money out of the employer.

But if it is direct, dollar for dollar how they underpaid you, there's more of a problem with recouping these wages directly to you. What does the DOL say about it? Why are you calling the state unemployment office? Even if they've approved you to draw a claim, without the employer having paid in the appropriate taxes on you, it's not your responsibility to get the money, you just to sign up for the claim and draw it out as appropriate and the department collects from the employer.
 

avatara359

Junior Member
I went through this whole process to file a wage claim with my employer. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileWageClaim.htm

I won that judgement and they awarded me 16k in damages in addition to the 16k in wages owed to me. My employer never even showed up to defend himself. Other than the notice that I won the judgement I received nothing in the mail. I kept trying to contact the state employment office and they never returned my calls. I eventually managed to get government secretary on the phone and they said a lein was put against the company but that is all they knew. From my research a lot of people have this problem, they win judgements but the companies just ignore it and nothing is done about it.

My employer abandoned the company shortly after I left, I doubt anyone bought it as it had no assets and the clients had sued for failure to perform. I occasionally get a contact from my previous employer claiming he was sorry about the whole thing and keeps promising to make payments to me but it never happens.

My only thought is to try to get a lawyer to try to collect on it. But the company was an LLC so I guess my employer isn't responsible for anything bad that happens? He kept leading me on promising that pay was coming instead of laying me off.

Its been two years since the company went under and I'm trying to figure out if there is anything else I can do about it.

I think you might be correct and there is nothing to be done...
 
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commentator

Senior Member
After you were no longer working for these people, because they had stopped paying you (excellent reason to quit the job, incidentally) did you ever file for unemployment insurance? You say you called and called, but did you file a claim for unemployment benefits? This would've been one way you could've recouped some small portion of what they owed you, as if it was determined that you were misclassified and the company had not paid in appropriate employer taxes to set you up an unemployment claim, you'd have been able to draw a claim even before they collected the money from them, from the unemployment general pool.

It is my understanding that if a company which owes back wages to employees files for bankruptcy, the wages owed come out before other creditors are paid, unpaid wages sort of take precedence in this situation, but it's hard to understand exactly what went on here. This employer obviously hasn't left the country, if he still contacts you from time to time, and it sounds like he's stringing you along because he may be worried you'll take some action against him (?) If I was going to talk to an attorney I don't think I'd put it off a minute longer.
 

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