Complaint (application) to the labor inspectorate about non-payment of wages

Author of the article: Anastasia Ivanova Last modified: January 2021 10588

If employees are faced with delays in wages, they often do not know where to begin in order to achieve repayment of the debt. Such individuals may simultaneously take steps in several directions at once. First of all, a claim is made to the employer for non-payment of wages. Its presentation allows, sometimes, to resolve the issue without involving many third-party structures.

When to complain about non-payment of wages

In accordance with the provisions of Art.
136 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, labor must be paid at least twice a month. Salary payment days must be shown in the employment contract. Typically, for the first half of the month payment is made after the 16th day, for the second half - after the 1st day, but no later than the 15th of the month.

Note : The start of the delay in the payment of wages is calculated from the day following the date of payment of wages established by internal departmental regulations. From this moment on, the subordinate has the right to file a claim with the manager demanding payment of wages.

If wages are not paid for more than 15 days, an employee can send a petition, regardless of the type of institution (individual entrepreneur, LLC, JSC, etc.), by sending a request:

1. Directly to the head of the institution.
2. To the prosecutor's office.
3. In the state labor inspectorate (LTI).
4. To a judicial institution.

A claim can be made to the head of the company immediately after a delay in payment of wages.

Before sending a request to the prosecutor's office, you must first try to resolve the problematic issue with the head of the company. It must be said that subordinates are not very willing to complain to the prosecutor's office, fearing future conflicts with the company's management. However, if management does not respond to a subordinate’s appeal, the employee, in order to protect his rights, will be forced to complain to the prosecutor’s office.

According to the latest changes in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, since 2106, the limitation period for collecting wage arrears is one year. Often, management, knowing about the statute of limitations, delays payment, reassuring subordinates with promises, thus achieving an overdue appeal.

Moral compensation

The Labor Code of our country establishes in Article No. 237 the coverage of moral damage that was caused to an employee due to illegal operations or the absence of such on the part of the organization’s management. The coverage must be paid in financial equivalent and in a set amount, which is determined by the employment contract or the judge.

If a controversial situation arises, the court determines whether damage has been caused, as well as the amount of compensation, regardless of the amount of wages owed.

As a rule, the defendant denies this fact and will strive to prove that he, and not the employee, suffered moral damage. Due to the fact that the manager always reacts painfully to the demands of employees, we have not found any apologies in judicial practice. Therefore, representatives of the judiciary are engaged in establishing the fact of moral damage and appropriate compensation.

Required papers

To file a complaint about delayed wages with the prosecutor's office, you must provide evidence of such an offense.
To substantiate the complaint, the following documents must be attached:

1. A copy of the employment agreement between the employer and the applicant.
2. An extract from the work record book confirming the fact of employment in the institution.
3. Copies of written appeals to the company's management, with a note about the registration of the complaint (incoming number, a mark about the registration of the responsible person of the company).

After preparing the listed materials, the working person can safely submit a request to the prosecutor's office with attached certificates.

Methods for filing a claim

Before sending any complaints to the employer, you should study the personal and collective employment agreement. Perhaps the text of the documents indicates a certain procedure for filing claims. In this case, you should stick to it. For example, some organizations allow complaints to be submitted via email.

If there is no such condition in the contract, a claim can be submitted to the employer in the following ways:

• Hand over personally to the office or to the manager himself. In this case, you should prepare a second copy of the claim in advance and request that you put on it the registration number of incoming correspondence and the signature of the responsible person who will accept the document.
• Send by registered mail with acknowledgment of delivery and a list of the contents to the address of the actual location of the organization.

Time limits for consideration of the application on its merits

The response time to complaints from citizens of the Russian Federation is shown in the Instructions (Order of the Prosecutor General's Office No. 45).
Registration of a received request with a complaint about a violation of a citizen’s rights is carried out within 3 days from the date of its receipt and must be considered within 15 days. The time for consideration of a complaint can be extended to 30 days if there is a need for additional examination, when requesting additional materials, etc. A message is sent to the applicant about the extension of the consideration time.

The prepared response is sent to the address displayed by the applicant in the request.

The absence of details of the author of the petition in the request is regarded as anonymous. Such requests are not considered by the prosecutor's office.

How to submit?

Drawing up a statement of claim is an important, but not the last step when going to court. Before filing a claim, the employee must send a copy of it and all documents to the employer, since Art. 132 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation directly prescribes this. After notifying the defendant, the employee may go to court.

Let's consider ways to file a claim in court:

1. Personal appeal. The claim can be filed with the court itself in person through the expedition or the office. It is enough to come with all the documents during court opening hours. It is recommended to attach copies of documents to the statement of claim, without leaving the originals.
2. Mail. If an employee does not have the opportunity to go to court personally or through a representative, he can send all documents by registered mail.
3. Internet. An employee can submit all documents through the GAS Justice service (https://ej.sudrf.ru/appeal/). To submit electronically, you must first register on the government services website. This method is the fastest and most convenient. However, before filing a claim, you must make sure that the selected district court can be addressed in this way.

The district court must decide whether to accept the claim for proceedings within 5 days from the date of its receipt.

How to write a statement to the prosecutor's office about non-payment of wages?

When writing a petition, the letter is written to the prosecutor who heads the department at the location of the company.
In the upper right part of the sheet it is required to display the position of the prosecutor, displaying the class and name of the unit, as well as full name. prosecutor.

Below are the details of the requester - full name, residence address and contact information. If there are many applicants, you need to display information about each one.

In the text of the request, after the title of the document, it is required to state:

1. Full name of the working person.
2. Company name, position and duration of work.
3. Period of non-payment of wages.
4. Amount of debt (in numbers and words).
5. Evidence that the employee contacted the head of the company regarding the issue of delayed payment.
6. If the employee stopped working because of this, then display the date of termination of work.
7. A request to consider the request and take action against the employer.

The request is signed, the date of completion is indicated, and the form, together with the attached certificates, is sent to the prosecutor's office.

A subordinate of a manager must not forget that he has the right not only to demand his salary, but also compensation for each day of delay in payment.

Upon dismissal

If the boss does not pay a salary when expelling a person, the latter has the right to file a protest with the State Tax Inspectorate.
If the labor inspectorate did not help the expelled employee, then he will have to send a request to the prosecutor's office with a request to organize an inspection of the company in connection with the non-payment of wages upon expulsion. The request is made in the same order as described above. In this option, you need to correctly describe the current circumstances, referring to Article 140 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. As evidentiary arguments, attached are the materials given to him upon expulsion in accordance with the current legislative norms:

1. A copy of the deduction order.
2. Extract from the work book.
3. Certificate of earnings.
4. A copy of the employment contract.
5. Statement of income tax remittance.

The head of the company, depending on the detected offenses, may be subject to criminal or administrative penalties.

Which court should I go to?

When drawing up a statement of claim, it is extremely important for an employee to correctly determine the court in which his dispute will be heard. Otherwise, his statement of claim may be returned without consideration.

• If wages are accrued but not paid (mandatory proceedings), the employee must apply to the magistrate’s court at the location of the employer.
• Disputes regarding non-payment of wages are heard in the district court. As a general rule, a statement of claim must be filed with the court at the location of the employer (organization or individual entrepreneur) or at the location of its branch or representative office.

• Also, an employee can go to court not only at the location of the employer, but also at the place of residence of the employee. In 2021, Part 6.3 was introduced into Article 29 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which changed the previously existing procedure for going to court.
  The Supreme Court has more than once emphasized the employee’s right to choose a district court when filing a claim (see Determination of the IC in civil cases of the Supreme Court No. 75-KG17-4 dated 08/14/2017). For example, Ivan lives in the Leninsky district and works in the Central district. Ivan can submit a statement of claim to the Central District Court, since the employer is located in this area. Ivan can also appeal to the Leninsky District Court, since the Code of Civil Procedure also provides for this possibility.

Note! Often, the employer specifies in the employment contract the place for consideration of labor disputes. However, such a condition cannot be applied, since it does not comply with the Civil Procedure Code and limits the employee’s right to choose a district court at his own discretion.

Recommended reading:

When is dismissal considered illegal and how to protect your rights?

What to do if you are forced to resign?

What to do if the employer refuses to dismiss you at his own request?

If an employment contract has not been concluded

In conditions of unemployment, workers often agree to any conditions when working for a company.
A number of managers take advantage of this situation in the labor market, abusing many mandatory provisions of labor standards. One of the most serious violations is the unofficial hiring of an employee by a company, without filling out an employment contract. In this case, management does not bear any obligations to the subordinate.

Often the promised wages are not accrued at all. In such a situation, it is much more difficult to seek the renewal of your rights. Of course, you need to go to the prosecutor's office with a complaint, which is formalized exactly as described above. However, the main thing that needs to be done in such circumstances is to collect materials proving that the person worked at this enterprise. The only possible evidence may be the involvement of witnesses.

Witnesses can be both clients of the enterprise and colleagues with whom the employee worked together. In addition, working documents containing the signature of the dismissed person or which he drew up in his own hand, copies of agreements, acts, invoices, as well as printouts of telephone conversations with officials of the enterprise may be useful as evidence.

Art. 67 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation regulates that an unformed contract is considered concluded if the employee, with the knowledge of the manager, began to fulfill the duties assigned to him. Therefore, a dismissed employee needs to make every effort to prove the employer’s wrongdoing.

In the video provided, you can familiarize yourself with the rules for filling out a request to the prosecutor's office.

( Video : “How to write a statement to the prosecutor’s office”)

What to write in a statement to the prosecutor's office about non-payment of wages

The request is drawn up on an A4 sheet in a custom style. The form must include all the information necessary to objectively assess the situation and take action against the employer. Despite the fact that there is no unified form for drawing up a complaint to the prosecutor's office, when drawing up a request, it is still necessary to follow the rules of execution related to business papers.

Introductory part

All requests and complaints sent to the prosecutor's office are most often addressed to the prosecutor at the head of the local office. At the same time, you need to display his position, unit name, rank and full name. (for example, “To the Prosecutor of Tomsk, State Counselor of Justice 3rd class I.I. Petrov ...”).

Here you also need to write down information about the author of the request: full name, residence address and telephone number.

Note : The request must be sent to the prosecutor at the location of the company where the author of the petition works, or to a higher authority (for example, for the Tomsk prosecutor's office, the prosecutor's office of the Tomsk region is considered a higher structure).

Descriptive part

This block displays all the information explaining the essence of the complaint:

1. The applicant's full name is filled in, indicating the date when he started working for the company.
2. Full name of the company with its registered address.
3. Applicant's position.
4. The time during which wages were not paid, starting from the initial moment of the delay and as of the time the complaint was sent.
5. A certificate confirming an appeal to the head of the company for an explanation of the reason for the delay in payment and his decision.
6. The total amount of non-payment of money with a mark of monthly income.
7. Date of termination of employment (if this was done).

The operative part

Here you need to lay out the requirements of the employee who submitted the request to the prosecutor:

1. Invite your boss to correct the violation.
2. Send the inspection materials to the State Tax Inspectorate for administrative punishment under Article 5.27 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.
3. Initiate criminal proceedings against the director of the institution under Article 145.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
4. Submit a claim to the court.

Note : A request to the prosecutor to delay payment of wages can be sent either individually or from the company’s team - there are no restrictions in such options.

Grounds for going to court

The right to wages is a constitutional right of a citizen of the Russian Federation, therefore the employer is obliged to pay the employee wages every half month. However, not all employers cope with this responsibility.

Employees, faced with such a situation, try to peacefully resolve the dispute without resorting to litigation. But often such attempts do not lead to any result. Therefore, the most effective way to solve the problem of collecting arrears of unpaid wages is to go to court.

Important! To protect labor rights in court, it is enough that the right to receive wages has been violated. That is, in order to go to court, it is not necessary to follow the pre-trial procedure, nor do you have to contact government agencies.

The legislator provides two ways to collect wages through the court:

1. Order proceedings (Article 122 of the Code of Civil Procedure).

This method of collecting wages is possible only when wages have been accrued but not paid to the employee. Such disputes between the parties to labor relations usually arise in cases where the employer experiences any financial problems, which leads to the formation of debt to employees.

A court order is a writ of execution on the basis of which an employee can contact either the bailiffs or the employer’s bank in order to receive unpaid wages. To obtain a court order, the employee should apply to the magistrate’s court at the employer’s location with an application for its issuance. An undoubted advantage of writ proceedings is the quick deadline for issuing an order, which is only 5 days from the date of filing the application.

An example of such a statement:

However, in order to receive an order, the following conditions must be simultaneously met:

• The employee has only one requirement - to receive the accrued salary. That is, if he additionally wants to compensate for moral damage, then writ proceedings are impossible.
• The employee knows exactly the amount of accrued wages, since he has pay slips (or other documents confirming the fact of accrual of wages) in his hands. That is, he has no dispute regarding the amount of payments.
• The amount collected does not exceed 500,000 rubles.

1. Judicial proceedings.

If an employer fails to accrue and pay wages to its employee, the latter may file a claim in court to recover wages. The employee may also demand to recover interest for the delay in payment of wages, compensation for moral damage, which cannot be done in order proceedings.

That is, the basis for filing a claim is the employer’s failure to fulfill its main obligation - payment of the employee’s labor.

Next we will talk in more detail about the statement of claim.

Sample application to the prosecutor's office for non-payment of wages

The complaint must be accompanied by materials certifying employment with the company:

• A copy of the employment contract
• Orders regarding employment or transfer.
• Extract from work record book, etc.
• If the issuance of copies of materials was refused, this must also be reflected in the petition.