Oklahoma Workers Owed Nearly $900k in Wages: Labor Department Launches Online Claim Tool

Oklahoma workers are owed nearly $900,000 in unpaid wages, and the US Department of Labor is working to return those funds before it is too late.

The US Department of Labor as an online search tool, called the WOW or Workers Owed Wages tool, that is straightforward and allows workers to entire information to find out if wages are being held on their behalf.

According to the US Department of Labor, there are about 1900 Oklahoma workers who are owed $894,000 in unpaid wages, they say the average owed in Oklahoma is about $450 per worker,

“If, for instance, an employee has moved, and they’re not, we can’t locate them, or maybe they’ve changed names, they didn’t leave a forwarding address, those types of instances, were unable to get the back wages to them,” said Community Outreach Specialist with the Wage & Hour Division, Jessica Parker.

The wage and hour division can only hold unclaimed back wages for three years before they have to turn it over to The Department of Treasury,

“Once it goes to the Treasury, there’s no way to get it back,” Parker said.

In an effort to reach out to more workers and help them claim the money they are owed before it is too late, the agency has developed an online search tool,

“It’s called WOW, or the workers owed wages tool and it is on our website,” said Parker, “They’ll just go in and enter a little bit of information about themselves and the place where they worked and that will interface with our database and kick out some information to let them know that they might have some money with us.”

The Department of Labor urges all Oklahomans to use the WOW tool to check if unpaid wages are waiting for them, even if they don’t think they are owed any funds,

“Our priority is making sure that the people that earned these wages get the money that they worked for, and so we really want to get the word out, share this information, and hope that the tool is widely used in the communities,” Parker said, “And if people don’t like to, you know, do things like this online, they can always give us a call.”

You can call the Wages & Hour Division at 1-866-4-US-WAGE