Salary Not Paid: Employer Withholding Wages and Overtime – How to Claim Back

This guide is written for employees who have not yet received their own money, including unpaid salaries, incomplete overtime pay, deducted amounts, and cases where the company goes silent and closes down.

⚠️ Don't rush to sign in exchange for the lump sum offered — Don't rush to sign a resignation letter or any document stating that you have received full payment and have no further claims. Even though an advance waiver agreement that falls below legal standards may be unenforceable, a compromise agreement made voluntarily after a dispute arises may have the effect of barring your right to claim. If you accept only the undisputed portion, you should reserve your remaining rights in writing, such as “This amount is accepted only for the undisputed portion, and this does not constitute a waiver of rights or an acknowledgment that payment has been made in full.”

Separate the outstanding money into items

• Wages for the days already worked, including the odd days in the final month
• Overtime pay and pay for work on holidays, which are separate items
• Pay for accrued annual leave not yet taken
• Work security deposit and money unlawfully deducted
• Severance pay and payment in lieu of advance notice, if terminated — for the calculation method, see how much severance pay you get if terminated

Wages and Overtime Have a 2-Year Prescription Period

The key word is "each installment." A person who has been unpaid for more than two years can therefore usually still claim the later installments, but the earlier ones have already slipped away. The prescription period may be interrupted or start running anew upon acknowledgment of the debt, partial payment, or filing of a lawsuit. A message typed by the supervisor saying "I'll transfer it next month" is therefore worth keeping. As for filing a complaint with a labor inspector, there is no specific time frame, but that does not mean it can be filed at any time, because in court the employer can raise the prescription period as a defense.

Warning: Do not wait until the prescription period is nearly expired, because each installment starts being counted at a different time, and the 30-day deadline for objecting to a labor inspector's order is another deadline far shorter than the prescription period.

Paying late does not mean paying only the principal

When in default, the employer must pay interest during default, which for certain types of payments is set at 15 percent per year. And if it is a willful failure to pay without reasonable cause, there is also a surcharge as a separate portion from the interest. The rate applicable to your case should be checked first, because claiming too much weakens your position, while claiming too little loses money.

Overtime Pay: Self-Check Where You're Being Cheated

• Rate used — overtime on a normal working day is higher than the normal hourly wage, and on holidays it goes higher still, in tiers; if every case is calculated at a single rate, that means it is wrong.
• Calculation base — money paid every month in a fixed amount as compensation for work may count as wages as well, even if the company calls it an allowance or a position allowance.
• Lump-sum payment and rounding down — paying a fixed lump sum without supporting time records, or working nearly an extra hour but counting it as zero.
• The claim that this position has no overtime — some groups of employees do genuinely have different conditions, especially those with authority to hire or terminate employees on the employer's behalf, but being called a "supervisor" does not by itself bring them within the exception.

The same principle applies to deductions: wages are the employee's money and cannot be deducted except under exceptions permitted by law. Amounts deducted unlawfully are usually the easiest to prove, because the figures appear on the company's own payslips.

Evidence: Save It Today Before the Company's Account Is Closed

The law requires employers to prepare and keep certain documents, such as employee registers, working time records, and evidence of wage payments. But do not rely on the employer's documents to prove everything on your behalf. You still need to prepare your own evidence on 4 matters: your employee status, the wage rate, the number of hours worked, and the amount claimed. What you can obtain by yourself even after leaving the job includes your own bank account statements, wage information reported to the Social Security Office, withholding tax certificates, and a list of colleagues who experienced the same situation.

Digital evidence must be collected most urgently, because it is the first thing to disappear when the company shuts down its systems or deletes user accounts. Download work emails, shift schedules, time-tracking files, and department group chats, especially messages in which the employer admits owing money, and save them on your own device starting today. Keep them as original files showing the date, time, and sender's name, not photographs of the screen. But do not access the company system after your access has been revoked, because evidence obtained through improper means can lead to you being prosecuted yourself.

The 3-Step Collection Ladder

1. Demand Letter — Itemize the amount, specify the calculation method and payment deadline, and send it with proof of receipt. You can write it yourself, and many matters end here.
2. Labour Inspector — File at the Provincial Labour Welfare and Protection Office in the area where you work. No fee is charged, and you can file yourself without a lawyer. The official will investigate the facts, summon the employer to explain and provide documents, and then issue an order.
3. Labour Court — For matters beyond the Labour Inspector's authority, or when either party is dissatisfied with the order.

Choose one route; do not run the two in parallel — For the same statutory money item, filing a petition with the Labour Inspector or filing a lawsuit in court may be deemed a choice of channel from the filing date, so you should not pursue both routes at the same time. If you wish to withdraw the petition from the Labour Inspector in order to sue in court, you should complete the withdrawal and keep evidence of the withdrawal before filing the lawsuit. Damages from unfair dismissal are a separate legal basis and must be filed with the Labour Court, and you must separate the money items so that they do not duplicate the matter before the Labour Inspector — compare the two channels at Should you choose the Labour Inspector or the Labour Court?

30 days is the deadline once an order has been issued — An employer, employee, or statutory heir of the employee who is dissatisfied with a Labour Inspector's order must bring the case to court within 30 days from the date of becoming aware of the order; otherwise, the order becomes final. This deadline also applies to an employee who received less than what they were entitled to. If the employer is the plaintiff, the employer must deposit with the court the amount due under the order. The employee or heir is not required to make this deposit. Therefore, you are not blocked because you lack a lump sum.

Channels that don't require paying a lawyer — straight answer

Free-of-charge assistance does exist and is sufficient in many cases, but that does not mean a labor case involves no costs at all.

Filing a claim and carrying out proceedings in the Labor Court are exempt from court fees, but the parties may still have certain actual expenses, such as lawyers' fees, travel costs, document costs, or special expenses for execution of a judgment. A person without a lawyer may file an oral claim with the court, and the court will ask questions and record them as the statement of claim. However, court officers do not act as lawyers or bear responsibility for forming the case on the claimant's behalf.

This exemption is tied to the labor court case itself; it does not exempt you from other expenses. The channels that provide assistance without charge include labor inspectors, volunteer lawyers at the court, the legal aid work of the Lawyers Council of Thailand, which considers helping financially disadvantaged persons on a case-by-case basis, the Office of Rights Protection and Legal Aid for the People of the Office of the Attorney General, the Provincial Justice Office, and the Damrongdhama Center.

These channels are often enough when the amount is not complicated and the employer still exists. But they are often not enough when the employer denies that you are an employee, the parties must argue about what counts as the wage base, you need to prove years of back overtime without time records, the employer has a lawyer and fights back, or the company is about to disappear and enter a process with deadlines that, once missed, cannot be remedied — try the free channels first, but don't keep trying until the prescription period expires.

Company Closed, or the Owner Has Disappeared

File a petition with the labor inspector immediately, even if the documents are not yet complete. Group together with your coworkers and write down any information you know about the employer's assets, because this information is what will be used in the enforcement stage.

If the employer does not pay severance pay, wages, or money as required by law even after the labor inspector has issued an order, the employee may request financial assistance from the Employee Welfare Fund without having to first enforce the claim until proving that the employer has no assets. The amount is only welfare assistance and may be lower than the amount the employer owes. The employee should promptly submit the labor inspector's order, the national ID card, bank account evidence, and evidence of hardship to the Office of Welfare and Labor Protection.

The form used for filing is สกล.1 (Employee Welfare Fund claim form). The ceiling is calculated as a multiple of the daily minimum wage. For money other than severance pay, such as unpaid wages and unpaid overtime pay, the ceiling is 60 times. For severance pay, the ceiling is based on length of service at 30, 50, and 70 times (higher figures in older news were COVID-period measures). In general, a claim may be filed within 2 years from the date the order becomes final, although in some cases it can be filed before it becomes final. Once you have received the notification letter to receive the money, you must proceed within 60 days. The regulations are periodically updated, so you should inquire with the office handling the matter.

If the company enters bankruptcy or business rehabilitation proceedings, the employee must file a claim for payment of debt with the Official Receiver within the time limit set in that case. Filing a petition with the labor inspector alone does not preserve this time limit, because they are separate processes, and once this is missed, it cannot be fixed.

The order is final, but the employer still hasn't paid

A final order from a labor inspector is not yet a writ of execution for seizing assets directly. If the employer does not pay, the employee should take the order back to the Office of Labor Protection and Welfare to request follow-up and criminal prosecution for failure to comply with the order, and to request assistance in bringing a case to the Labor Court to obtain a judgment that can be used to seize or attach assets. In addition, if the eligibility conditions are met, the employee may also apply for money from the Employee Welfare Fund at the same time.

An order or judgment is therefore not money yet, and no government official will automatically go out to find assets for you — the method for tracing assets is covered in debt collection, suing debtors, and enforcement. You should therefore seriously consider a mediation offer, because money actually received next month is sometimes worth more than the full amount from a company that is about to have nothing left.

If you are not sure which path your matter should take, tell us your story here or see the scope of labor cases that our team handles.

Before signing any documents

Do not rush to sign a resignation letter or any document stating that you have received all money in full and have no further claims. You should request copies, request an itemized calculation of all types of payments, and ask for time to review the documents before signing.

If you accept only the undisputed portion of the payment, you should reserve your rights to the remainder in writing, for example by writing on the payment receipt:

"This payment is accepted solely as the undisputed portion, and does not constitute a waiver of rights or an acknowledgment that payment has been made in full."

Read More

• How Much Severance Pay If Dismissed: A Guide to Employee Rights
• Choosing a Labour Inspector or Suing in the Labour Court
• Terminated: What Rights Do Employees Have?
• Won the Case but Not Yet Paid: Asset Tracing and Enforcement

This guide was prepared by Suwanvara Law Firm — established in B.E. 2529, head office in Khon Kaen with a branch in Bangkok. This content is general information, not legal advice for any specific case. The outcome of each matter depends on the facts and evidence of that matter. Before taking any action, you should consult with a professional.