I work for a small business that only has one person that does

File: dol-logo.png (85KB, 548x548px) Image search: [Google]

85KB, 548x548px

I work for a small business that only has one person that does payroll. Our payroll person is getting up there in years and we don't have anyone else that knows how to do it. At one point she retired and the owner of the company begged her to come back and offered her any amount of money just because no one else knows what to do. As an employee I'm a bit concerned by this because if she drops dead tomorrow I have no idea when the fuck I'm getting paid. Checks have already been late a lot more than usual this past few months and she's in the hospital now so they'll be late again this week too. It's obviously not her fault but the fault of the owner for not planning ahead and teaching someone else how to do payroll.

What I want to know is that in the event that our payroll person either dies or is forced to take her retirement due to her health how much of a grace period do I need to give the company before I go to my state's department of labor and complain about not being paid and what happens after that?