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.

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Colorado follows the basics of the federal new hire reporting labor laws for the most part. For instance, the state requires that employers submit the names and info for new hires to their State Directory of New Hires, or SDNH, within 20 days after the employee’s date of hire. They have a slight addition to the regulation, though, also saying that employers can get in the information by the first regularly scheduled wage payment after the date of the employee’s hire, if that wage payment date is after the 20 day window.

On the other hand, Colorado has a special clause—though we have also seen it in other states as well, so it’s not that “special”—for employers if you are submitting all of your new hire reports electronically. In that case, you have to send in your new hire reports two times per month, and each reporting cannot be less than 12 days apart and not more than 16 days apart.

Get yourself a trusty human resource calendar for keeping track of days off requests and new hire starting dates, and you shouldn’t have any problem keeping track of all of these time periods and windows in which you have to get your reporting in.

Whatever way you decide to submit your new hire info, you have to send in the same basic info about the employees. You need to supply the name of all of your new hires and re-hires, as well as their address and social security number. Their date of birth is optional, as is the date of their hire. This date of hire, by the way, is officially defined by the state of Colorado labor law as the first day that the employee actually works for you and starts to earn their pay.

The Colorado (CO) Department of Human Resources is a key provider of very relevant and necessary information to those of us that live within the state. In many ways, this department is made up of information and tools for just about anyone in the state. That allows us to have one place to go to learn more about what is happening here, what programs are available and just what help we can count on as far as the work place goes. With that said, it is helpful to know a little bit more about some of the opportunities available through this department.

For example, the most common need that needs to be met by the Colorado Department of Human Resources is that of unemployment. It happens to all of us at some point. That’s why we often need to seek out help for financial assistance and perhaps even insurance assistance while we are not always working. Yet, the department provides for more than just this. There are special programs in place to aid those that need it in finding the help they need for employment. Groups like the Dislocated Workers, Older Worker Program, Welface Help and Veterans assistance programs are all there to aid in providing necessary education and training to those looking for a better job.

Throughout the state’s Department of Labor, we will find other programs that are geared towards providing services that we all need. This includes such things as employee benefits, information about careers (and even which are in high demand in Colorado) and help for those that are looking for disability assistance. This wealth of information is vital to the well being of any of us that live within the state of Colorado. Yet, knowing what the Colorado Department of Human Resources offers is not something we all take full advantage of as we should.