Interfaith Worker Justice Confronts Labor Department on Inadequate Effort to Locate Low-wage Workers

Lawsuit Filed to Help Workers Awarded Back Wages Collect Them

Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), represented by the consumer advocacy organization, Public Citizen, filed suit in U. S. District Court on January 18, 2006, to help thousands of workers collect unpaid back wages. Click here to read the press release.

Each year, millions of dollars are returned to the U.S. Treasury because workers who are owed back wages, known as “unlocatables,” cannot be found. “Establishing a back wages database would encourage thousands of past, present, and future workers earning low wages to step forward to report wage theft and other wage violations and thousands more could access the backwage awards that are rightfully theirs,” stated IWJ’s executive director Kim Bobo.

IWJ’s lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., follows the DOL’s denial of IWJ’s April 2005 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Its lack of response to IWJ’s July 2005 official appeal of the decision to deny information made the lawsuit necessary. Click here to read the complaint filed in District Court.

Watch for additional media coverage and please consider writing a letter to the editor in your local newspaper supporting this attempt to ensure that workers in low-wage jobs have another venue through which to attain wages owed to them. If your letter is published, please send a copy to IWJ’s Communication Director, Cynthia Brooke.