labor lawAdivision of labor law center

An aerospace defense contractor based in Broomfield, Colorado was ordered to pay almost $1 million in back wages to 904 employees in four states plus the District of Columbia.

The U.S. Department of Labor charges that Ball Aerospace and Technologies, Inc. failed to pay $976,327 in overtime to employees in Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, Georgia and Washington D.C.

According to sources, an investigation showed that once senior technicians reached the maximum hourly rate, they were arbitrarily and unlawfully changed to salaried-exempt status. The change in pay rate did not include a significant increase in responsibilities. Under federal law, in order to be exempt from overtime pay, employees must have decision-making powers, significant administrative duties or they must supervise three or more people. None of those conditions were met for the 111 technicians in question, so they are due $383, 235 in unpaid overtime.

In addition, all employees were routinely required to work through their lunch periods without any pay. Even if they were not able to take a lunch break, an hour was deducted from their time cards every work day. This violation resulted in payments of $593,092 to 793 employees.

Ball agreed to keep more accurate payroll records in the future, in compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA, and to pay all required wages to employees in the future.

In late July, the U.S. Department of Labor forced Desert Plastering, Inc., a Las Vegas Nevada firm, to pay nearly $1.2 million in back pay to 1060 employees. The feds found that Desert Plastering had not paid required overtime to lathers, finishers, plasterers and estimators who worked up to 58 hours per week.

In early July, the U.S. Department of Labor forced 107 subcontractors of KBR, Inc. of Virginia to pay some $1.5 million in back wages and benefits for up to 2,600 workers who participated in the Hurricane Katrina recovery project. The construction workers were involved in repairs to the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport Mississippi or the Naval Air Station/Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. The U.S. Department of Labor is still searching for some of the workers involved in that case. Anyone who believes that they are owed back wages for these projects can contact the nearest U.S. Department of Labor office. The average payment per worker in that case was $616.

Earlier this year, under a voluntary agreement to prevent a federal suit, Wal-Mart, Inc. agreed to pay $33 million in unpaid overtime wages to 86,680 employees throughout the nation. An internal audit revealed that the company had incorrectly classified some employees as “salary-exempt” when in fact they were entitled to overtime pay. In other cases, the company admitted that it had based overtime pay on the employee’s base hourly rate, not including incentives and bonuses in the employee’s average rate as required by law.

The Fair Labor Standard Act requires that most U.S. employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage, which is currently $5.85 per hour. The FLSA also mandates that employees must be paid 1.5 times their usual hourly rate for each hour over 40 in a single work week.

Many employers mistakenly believe that any worker paid by salary is exempt from overtime. The FLSA does provide a number of exemptions to the overtime law for bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales jobs. In general, employees must meet job duty and salary tests, to be exempt from overtime.

The U. S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division collected more than $171 in back wages for some 246,000 employees in 2006. Thos wages were a result of 31,987 “compliance actions” in 2006.

A special US Dept. of Labor taskforce on minimum wage violations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has had unexpected results in Ohio.

The firm violated the Ohio overtime and federal minimum wage laws, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which conducted the investigation. The probe began after a tip from an employee led to the discovery that the firm was violating the minimum wage law in 16 states. It was also violating the FLSA, or federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

A Houston, Texas tree-trimming firm involved in the Hurricane Katrina cleanup failed to pay the minimum wage to its workers, and has been ordered to pay back-wages to more than 2,500 employees.

The violation of the federal and Ohio overtime law will cost the company more than $1.8 million. That’s the amount of back wages it has been ordered to pay, following the investigation by the Department of Labor.

The company must pay back wages to its Ohio employees, plus workers from Maryland, Virginia, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The firm cleans up around power lines and after natural disasters, such as hurricanes.

Employees, according to FLSA rules, must be paid the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour for the first 40 hours, then time-and-a-half for overtime after that. Employers must also keep time and payroll records that are accurate.

The investigation in this case began when Labor Department officials received a tip from an employee. They discovered the company had violated the minimum wage law in 16 states, as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act.

 “We are pleased,” said Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, “that we were able to help these workers get the back pay they deserve.” She said the department would continue its push “to ensure that employers are paying workers properly.”

The investigation resulting in the charges against ABC Professional Tree Services covered the period from August of 2004 to August of 2006. 

In Ohio, the overtime labor laws are quite similar to the overtime laws in many of the states that we’ve already looked at. And that means, as I’ve gotten into before, that the Ohio overtime laws are also similar in many respects to the federal overtime labor laws contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Does that mean we shouldn’t look at the Ohio laws? Of course not! We ought to look at them for the simple fact that they exist, meaning that Ohio has overtime laws on its books compared to states that don’t have overtime laws at all. What’s that mean? It means that all workers (with some exceptions) in Ohio are ensured to get overtime.

On the other hand, theoretically speaking, if Ohio didn’t have overtime laws, the only law governing this aspect of wage labor would be the federal FLSA. This law only covers certain businesses—large interstate businesses with operations inside and outside of Ohio, and those that take in more than $500,000 in revenue per year. Certain types of businesses, such as schools, hospitals, and governments, also are always covered by the FLSA. Small businesses, on the other hand, in our theoretical discussion, wouldn’t be required by federal law to pay overtime.

But Ohio does have an overtime law, so all businesses (with some exception) are required to pay their employees time and a half for all time spent working in a week over 40 hours.

If you’ve noticed, I keep saying “with exceptions.” Well, what are those exceptions? For Ohio, the overtime labor law states that agricultural employees are exempt from, or do not have to be paid, overtime requirements. Also excluded are employees that are exempt from Ohio’s minimum wage requirements. The federal FLSA also has its fair share of exclusions, such as those that exempt professional, administrative, and executive type employees.