The state issued citations for $1.8 million in back wages and penalties in response to more than a thousand complaints claiming unpaid wages last year, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
The state determined that 802 of the 1,067 complaints, including two against the Girl Scouts of Colorado, had merit, said Alexandra Hall, director of the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics at the department.
Disagreements regarding overtime rules, separation payouts and vacation pay were behind some of the disputes. Others resulted when employers went out of business.
“It isn’t necessarily that the employer knowingly and willingly withheld wages. It could be a lack of awareness on wage law,” said Cher Roybal Haavind, a spokeswoman for the labor department.
Girl Scouts of Colorado had two citations for $7,788.46 in October.
“The claims were the result of a clerical error, which happened when Girl Scouts of Colorado switched to a new time frame for payroll,” said AnneMarie Harper, a spokeswoman for the Denver nonprofit.
She added that the workers in question, who had left the organization voluntarily, were paid. Haavind estimates more than 90 percent of the wage citations are paid once the state makes its ruling.
Cybergy Partners and its subsidiary Primetrix LLC had the largest dollar amount in citations at $39,461 between disputed wages and penalties. Cybergy Partners, based in the south metro area, advised clients on clean energy and smart grid technology and also provided back office support to clients as they managed government contracts. Former executives told state investigators the company was out of business.
Most of the complaints date to 2015 and 2016, including ones from Brown’s Compounding Center, a Douglas County company that the FBI and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency raided and shut down in 2015, leaving the pay for 85 workers in limbo after an asset freeze.
Unpaid wage claims are capped at $7,500 per employee. But state investigators can tack on 125 percent in penalties, which goes directly to workers. Last year, the state found $863,000 in unpaid wages, which rose to $1.8 million once penalties were included.
A state-ordered payment has a higher priority when pursuing unpaid wages from an employer who is under bankruptcy protection. Workers who file a wage complaint can also avoid having to file in small claims courts and the expense involved with that.
The Wage Protection Act of 2014 provided state regulators with more teeth to pursue unpaid wages, including the ability to levy fines if an employer doesn’t respond to requests for information, doesn’t produce pay stubs or fails to pay.
The Wage Theft Transparency Act of 2017 allowed the state to publish a list of citations starting on April 13 of last year.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of the story listed unpaid wage citations between April and November of 2017 that were public. It has been updated to include full year numbers.
