Texas workers are owed $11 million in back pay

The big picture: In Texas, just over 15,000 workers are collectively owed $11,015,541 in back pay, per a news release from the Labor Department.

• The agency has the funds as a result of unpaid wage investigations, usually triggered by a labor law violation complaint, like unpaid overtime.
• In some cases, employers found to be in violation pay the workers directly. In others, they pay it to the Labor Department, which has three years to remit it to workers — otherwise, it goes to the U.S. Treasury, per the Seattle Times.
• For a business to land on this list means "at some point the department's wage and hour division investigated them for some type of violation, the business paid the money owed, and some of the employees they could not find so they sent us the money so that we could try to find them," Juan Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor, tells Axios.

How it works: To see if you're owed some of the millions, use the Workers Owed Wages online tool to search for your current or former employer, then your name.

• If you're on there, fill out a claim form, upload an ID and the agency will send a check in about six weeks.

Zoom in: About 840 Texas employers have remitted money owed to workers to the Labor Department, according to data the federal agency shared with Axios.

• Restaurants, construction, nursing and child care and janitorial services seem to be the most common industries owing back wages in the state, per an Axios review.

By the numbers: As of Nov. 1, the latest data available, more than 40 Austin employers were listed as sending unpaid wage money to the Department of Labor.

• As of Nov. 1, for example, the Department of Labor had $23,820 owed to 31 people who had worked at the Tavern, per the agency.

What they're saying: Michael Shelton, an owner of the Tavern, said the unpaid money traces back to a tip pool violation the restaurant resolved with the agency a couple of years ago — at which point some of the workers who were part of the pool were no longer working at the restaurant.

• "You have a number of transitory people in the bar-restaurant business, and the addresses they leave behind might lead to checks not being cashed, so eventually that money was sent to the Department of Labor," he told Axios. "If we don't have a good address for the employee, then that becomes a bit of a problem."

• The Department of Labor also had $64,302 owed to 202 employees of Silber and Son, a construction firm with a North Austin address. The company did not respond to Axios' request for comment.

Flashback: In 2020, popular Mexican restaurant Polvo's paid $98,520 in back wages and damages to 19 employees to resolve federal labor law overtime violations.

• As of Nov. 1, six people who worked at Polvo's collectively stand to get $381.83 from the restaurant — but that money is now with the Department of Labor.

The big picture: Employees in construction, janitorial services, restaurants, domestic cleaning and hotel services "are more vulnerable to experiencing labor violations because a substantial percentage of them do not speak English or are undocumented," Christine Bolaños, communications director for the Austin-based Workers Defense Project, a nonprofit labor rights group, tells Axios.

• "This makes them more likely to experience wage theft, lack of workers' compensation, lack of proper safety training and proper safety gear, and to experience retaliation up to and including termination when they sound the alarm on workplace injustices."