Washington Sets Up New Administrative Complaint Procedure for Wrongly Withheld Wages

The Employment Law Blog reports that Washington State has just enacted new legislation which provides for an administrative complaint procedure for collecting wrongly withheld wages under newly amended Chapter 49.48 or the Revised Washington Code.

Some of the more important provisions require that the State Labor Department investigate such claims and issue a determination on such claims within 60 days of the complaint being filed, the Labor Department may assess penalties if it determines the wrongful withholding of wages was willful, and the Labor Department now has express collection procedures for obtaining unpaid wages and unpaid  penalties.

As the Labor Employment Blog points out, however, this new law may not represent all good news for Washington State employees.  On the one hand, a private administrative action for unpaid wages might be most beneficial for employees with small claims for unpaid wages who either can't, or don't want to, go through the judicial pocess.  Kinda like small claims court. 

However, unlike the Washington Wage Payment Law, this new administrative action only allows employees to collect unpaid wages, as any penalties collected go into a state fund.  Thus, under the new adminstrative scheme, employees cannot receive double the wages withheld or attorneys' fees as a result of a wage payment violation as they could under current state law.

It appears that the new scheme presents employees with wrongly withheld wages with a compromise: we will provide you with greater and easier access to a claim, but in return you must give up any expectation for a higher judicial payout.  Actually, it sounds a lot like the compromis behind the  workers' comp system.

PS