Unpaid wages

by Chris

(Kentucky)

I worked 80 hours every two weeks over the past 6 years and for most of that time I got paid like clockwork.Then my boss got mad at me and my two coworkers and bragged he wasn’t gonna pay us all of the time we had worked.I thought it was a threat until I saw my check for only 32 hours when I had worked 80.I went to payroll to see if it was a mistake and they pulled my timesheet. It wasn’t the one I had filled out.He had printed out one for 32 hours and it wasn’t signed by me.I went to my boss to ask her and she wouldn’t give me any answers so I quit.Do you think they will approve my unemployment claim as quitting for a good reason.I mean not getting paid all the hours worked is one of the best reasons to quit if you ask me.

Hi Chris,

I wish I could be more positive, but in lieu of that, I’ll try to explain why I’m not.

Certainly, when an employer doesn’t pay employees, in a way that keeps the employer in compliance with federal wage and hour laws and any state’s labor law that may offer even more employee protections, there is potential for good cause to collect unemployment benefits.

What I’m not detecting in the situation as you described it, is something that may give you the ability to prove the facts, by weighting your story with a paper trail that can also prove you exhausted efforts to “preserve the employment relationship” before you quit.

It’s the same hurdle to collect benefits I look at for any employee, that quit, and especially when I know the reason they quit, is arguably for a good cause reason to collect benefits.

Sadly, I see the hurdle as potentially being cleared, when an employee mentions something that may be turned into an argument to prove their burden of fault, that voluntarily quitting their job was the employer’s. Sadly, because I usually only hear from people it’s after they quit, or before they exhausted efforts that may of helped them to be perceived as trying to remain employed.

Clearly, to me at least, proving good cause is something done with foresight while still employed vs. from hindsight, after one is unemployed and can no longer create a papertrail of their efforts to preserve their job.

If you could only of proven your employer was not properly paying you in any way not compliant with a federal, or more specifically, Kentucky labor law on the matter of wage and hours .. a wage complaint would of been in order after you spoke to payroll, which was, one effort, but not the final effort that generally gives one the ability to argue why quitting was due to the fault of the employer.

Meeting a burden to prove the non-moving party was at fault for the reason the moving party ended the relationship, is simply easier to do, when you can prove all you did as that “reasonable person” mentioned almost non-stop in unemployment decisions .. because of credible proof, or testimony they put forth a real effort to save any employment relationship.

However, when I hear an at-will employer unreasonably withheld an employee’s pay as a means to punish an employee, I don’t just feel hot under the collar .. I continue to fight this fight.

Here are some relevant links for anyone, but especially those in Kentucky to follow through on to know if they should exercise their employee rights in the workplace, which may, or may not help them to preserve their job, but can create a lovely organized paper trail of evidence to help them meet if it becomes necessary the burden of having good cause to collect unemployment benefits.

Chris – Unemployment-Tips.com

Federal Wage and Hour Division
Kentucky Labor Laws About Wages