TDCJ behind on paying employees overtime

AUSTIN – KXAN reports the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is behind on paying employees overtime pay, KXAN confirmed on Monday. One former employee said he’s been waiting around six months for hundreds of dollars he was never paid. The former employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he worked for TDCJ on and off for eight years. “[I feel] just used and taken for granted,” the former employee told Reporter Jala Washington. After quitting in October, the former employee said he grew frustrated with working conditions and pay issues. “My pay has been messed up several times, but this time, I’ve been waiting since May,” the former employee said. “They claim they’re short-handed and can’t get caught up.” A TDCJ spokesperson told KXAN all standard paychecks are being paid on time each month but said there’s a new time clock system that sometimes requires timesheets to be manually adjusted, leading to delays in additional pay.

According to TDCJ, it processes payroll for 31,000 employees across the state. The spokesperson said they’re now looking into how many employees are still owed money and how much the agency owes them. There’s no clear timeline on how long it’ll take to pay employees their additional pay still owed. KXAN spoke with Civil Rights Attorney Austin Kaplan about legal circumstances surrounding businesses not paying employees on time. “The short answer is this is not legal,” Kaplan said. “But the challenge that these workers face is there are significant loopholes in Texas law that make it super hard to recover.” Kaplan said Texas has two wage laws, but that they lack specifics. “There’s not that much clarity in terms of when you have to be paid by,” Kaplan said. “[In this situation with TDCJ employees], private attorneys can’t really get involved, because there’s no private cause of action that we can bring against a state agency in Texas.” Kaplan said employees would need to get the United States Department of Labor involved, which does offer free legal services. “It’s just that they’ve got to take the case, and it can take a while,” Kaplan said. Kaplan said there would be more protections for employees, if they were in a union, with a contract that TDCJ could not legally breach. “I’m really just expecting to take it as a loss,” the former TDCJ employee said. TDCJ said it is working on adding more staff to help with manual time adjustments that are contributing to pay delays.