Short answer. For the amounts that fell due five years ago, yes. Article 291 requires money claims from an employer-employee relationship to be filed within three years from the time the cause of action accrued, and says they are otherwise forever barred. But later shortfalls may still be recoverable.
What the law says
All money claims arising from employer-employee relations accruing during the effectivity of this Code shall be filed within three (3) years from the time the cause of action accrued; otherwise they shall be forever barred.
Labor Code, Article 291 — Prescription Of Money Claims. Read the full provision →
Three years, measured from accrual
The period is three years and it runs from the time the cause of action accrued — that is, from when you first became entitled to demand the money and did not get it. It does not run from the day you discovered the shortfall, from the day you complained internally, or from the day the employer refused to fix it. The closing words are unusually blunt for a statute: a claim outside the period is forever barred. That is not a bar the employer has to be generous about waiving; it is the Code shutting the door.
An underpayment is not one claim but many
This is the part that saves most people, and it is worth understanding properly. If you were paid below what you were owed every fifteenth and thirtieth for years, each of those short payments was its own cause of action, accruing on its own date. The clock therefore does not start once, at the beginning of the practice, and finish for everything three years later. It starts afresh for every pay period. So a shortfall running from five years ago to today is generally barred as to its oldest portion and live as to the rest.
Waiting for the job to end is the common mistake
Employees very often decide to raise wage claims only once they have left, on the sensible instinct that complaining while employed invites trouble. The difficulty is that the article measures from accrual, not from separation, so the oldest months are quietly expiring the whole time you wait. Each month of delay does not merely postpone the claim; it trims the recoverable window from the far end. If the practice is still going on, that is a reason to get advice sooner rather than after the engagement finishes.
Work out the figure period by period
Do not present this as a single lump sum for five years, because that is the framing most likely to draw a blanket objection. Line up your payslips against the rate you should have been paid and produce the shortfall pay period by pay period, with dates. Gather what you can for the last three years first — payslips, bank credits, timekeeping records, the contract or appointment letter fixing your rate. Then bring the whole set to a lawyer, who can tell you where the line falls and what remains worth pursuing.