Opinion ID: 2834302
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Payday Law

Text: In 1915, the Legislature enacted the first Texas Payday Law, requiring certain types of employers to promptly and regularly pay employees the full amount of wages due. [1] At present, it requires private employers [2] of all types and sizes to pay wages owed to employees [3] in full, on time, and on regularly scheduled paydays. Tex. Lab. Code § 61.011. Originally, employees pursued unpaid wage claims in court, if at all. In 1989, the Legislature authorized the Texas Employment Commission (now part of TWC) to receive and adjudicate complaints for failure to pay wages owed. Act of May 31, 1989, 71st Leg., R.S., ch . 1039, § 3.01, 1989 Tex. Gen. Laws 4172, 4213−16 (current version at Tex. Lab. Code §§ 61.051−.067). This amendment gives employees the option of filing in court or with TWC to recover unpaid wages. Tex. Lab. Code § 61.051(a) (“An employee who is not paid wages as prescribed by this chapter may file a wage claim with the commission.”) ( emphasis added). Although there are no statutory limitations on the amount a wage claimant may pursue at TWC, typically the claims are too small to justify a lawsuit. [4] According to TWC, it receives approximately 20,000 wage claims per year for initial decision, and about 18% of those claims are appealed to TWC’s appeals tribunal yearly. TWC’s procedures are designed to resolve claims expeditiously and inexpensively, and it uses abbreviated mechanisms of an adversarial judicial process to adjudicate wage claims. For example, TWC’s rules provide for issuance and enforcement of subpoenas for witnesses and documents, representation by counsel, and issuance of decisions of TWC’s appeals tribunals in writing. See 40 Tex. Admin. Code §§ 815.18, 821.45(c). The Legislature has granted TWC broad authority to enforce its decisions. See Tex. Lab. Code §§ 61.019 (making the failure to pay wages a felony), 61.020 (authorizing the attorney general to seek injunctive relief against repeat offenders), 61.081 (making a final TWC order an administrative lien on all of an employer’s property), 61.091 (granting TWC the authority to levy the employer’s bank account). Aggrieved parties may appeal the initial Commission preliminary wage determination order to a TWC appeals tribunal, and, after exhausting administrative remedies, appeal the Commission’s final order to a court of competent jurisdiction. Id. § 61.062(a).