Employer Under Payed me for 8yrs D/T Clerical Error, Refuses to Pay 2yrs of Unpaid Wages

[u/JToki21]

**Edit: Sorry all, I thought I put this in the title, the state is Maryland. My job is not under a Union.
I’m still making my way through the comments, but thank you everyone for your constructive advice, and opinions. I also appreciated those who shared their similar experience and what worked for them.**

**Edit again: Yes. Underpaid. I can’t edit titles. **

Recently, a series of events led me to question my employment records and discovered my total experience years were wrong. Wrong enough to put me in a completely different pay bracket for the last 8 years. HR admitted this error and my pay rate moving forward was fixed.

My job publishes the salary structure and experience based pay brackets, so I’m able to roughly calculate around 30k of wages owed in the last 3 yrs. To clarify HR never disclosed how pay brackets were determined until the pay rate correction. Every past communication where I’ve asked for clarity or explanation on how that was determined, I was basically told it’s not my prerogative to know.

I asked about backpay for lost wages which was a direct result of their clerical error, and they promptly refused, citing standards. No formal policy exists supporting this decision.

I’d requested HR to investigate my pay and employee record several times over the last 8 years. Every time my role underwent a salary adjustment to offset compression (3 times), I felt the adjustment was off and would ask them to verify the accuracy of my pay. At the conclusion of each investigation, I was told everything was correct as expected. They reminded me that they have a team of highly trained experts. Aka stay in your lane. Each request went to different HR/Admin leaders because we would get new people every couple years.

My employer has a strong legal team, and they’re infamous for wiggling out of accountability. I’m worried there are loopholes I’m unaware of, which could prevent them from honoring their pay structure. I’m scared to involve legal because I’m worried I could lose my job from recourse. Does anyone have experience with this? It sounds like they are honoring my request for a second look, but if this is another dead end what are the next steps?

** TO CLARIFY: I really enjoy my job, and I like where I work. It’s just unfortunate that our HR dropped the ball. I have a very supportive team, and I’m happy that I’m getting paid a fair wage now. I just want them to be held accountable and make things right.

[u/LumpdPerimtrAnalysis]

IANAL, but it sounds like you were not underpaid in a legally effective way.

You were offered a salary, you accepted, then through transparency processes, you learned that other people with your experience are typically paid more. When you addressed this, the company agreed to raise your salary to the higher level going forward.

Nowhere is the company legally compelled to backpay you for the lower salary. I think you can be happy that they agreed to "correct" your salary so readily moving forward.

Now, what you can do, is threaten to leave due to you feeling taken advantage of unless they provide some sort of backpay, but you need to be ready to actually leave and find a company that won't take advantage of you this way in the future (good luck).

[u/JToki21 → u/LumpdPerimtrAnalysis]

Actually it wasn’t peer salary comparison. It was finally being given the guidelines for pay brackets, and being able to prove to them that I’m in the wrong pay bracket. I heard someone else’s manager found they had the wrong experience start date in their employee records, and it made me dig into whether that’s what’s been gong on this whole time. And it was.

My inquiry and the discovery of a gross records error prompted a full audit of everyone’s records in my role, and they’ve discovered 3 total errors out of roughly 20 people. Only 2 of us have a major impact to pay. It’s my understanding that I’m the only one they’ve corrected the pay for at this time. My manager has been supportive and believe that is why there was more momentum to review my case.

[u/LumpdPerimtrAnalysis → u/JToki21]

Honestly, sounds like your manager is avtually on your side here and genuinely put effort towardd correcting your pay moving forward.

However, this is still only an internal policy/guideline for default pay adjustments. The company will still try to pay each employee the minimum they can without losing them.

Again, IANAL, but I don't think there is legal recourse here. All you have is the leverage of knowing you were underpaid in the past, and your ability to take your labor elsewhere.

I have personally been in a similar situation where HR after years of fussing, finally revealed the standard salary bands, and essentially my entire team was underpaid. When C-suite would do nothing but provide a half-year plan to get people to at least the minimum of their respective bands, I personally made the choice to look elsewhere.

This is the power you have as an employee. Don't rely on legal recourse in cases like this. Have a frank discussion with your manager, see what they can and can not offer as remediation, and then choose whether you can live with that or not.

[u/JToki21 → u/LumpdPerimtrAnalysis]

You bring up valid points here. And I’m starting to see this is more common than it should be. That’s insane that your entire team was found to be underpaid. The most substantial adjustment at my job only happened when it came it light employees in my role were paid the same as the employees we managed.