Wage and Hour in the Courts: Week of August 6 - 10
Posted on 09-Aug-07 by The Timekeeper
Well, it was a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, it seems. Only two things to report:
Five Long Island Restaurants Assessed Nearly $1 Million in Back Wages
On August 7, 2007, the U.S. DOL announced that five commonly-operated restaurants located in Long Island, NY, and seven officers of the companies, have been ordered to pay 192 low-wage employees $966,046 in back wages and to pay the DOL civil penalties of $14,773 to resolve lawsuits filed by the DOL alleging violations of the FLSA.
Of course, it was the standard litany of issues: employees being paid less than minimum wage, putting in long hours (naturally, without overtime pay), and the by-now-you-should-expect-them “violations of the FLSA’s recordkeeping requirements.”
What makes this one interesting is that even though at least some of the restaurants were apparently organized as corporations, seven of the company’s officers were also evidently found to be personally responsible. Oh, yeah, and as part of the consent judgment, the defendants agreed to refrain from taking any retaliatory action against employees who exercise their rights under the law.
Hmm.
According to the DOL’s press release, if the defendants fail to make any payments, “the court will appoint a receiver with power to seize and liquidate the defendants’ assets to satisfy the back wage payment order.” Now, I’m no lawyer (duh), but I believe this doesn’t just apply to the assets of the restaurants, not if the corporate officers were also individually named in the order to pay.
Something to ponder next time you’re wondering about whether it’s worth it to shell out for a time clock to make sure you’re tracking your workers’ time accurately. Food for thought, indeed.
U.S. DOL Sues Pilgrim’s Pride, Seeking Over $3 Million in Back Wages
Hoo-boy, this one is a doozy! On August 8, the DOL announced they’ve filed a lawsuit against Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. in Dallas to try to recover over $3 million in back wages the DOL says they owe to more than 500 former and current employees engaged in poultry processing work.
Once again, ho-hum, failure to pay proper overtime and failure to keep adequate records, yadda yadda yadda.
The twist in this one is that, at least in part, the overtime violations occurred because the company allegedly failed to pay employees for time spent putting on and taking off protective clothing. Now, given that this issue went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2005 (IBP Inc. v Alvarez et al. and Tum et al. v Barber Foods Inc.), and the justices were quite clear that time spent “donning and doffing” protective gear is compensable time, I’m not sure what the excuse could reasonably be made for not paying workers for that time. Especially since both of those case, if memory serves, also related to companies in the poultry processing industry. I mean, you can’t get much more straightforward than that.
I suppose you could try to rely on your workers not being all the “up” on Supreme Court doings, but ya know, all it takes is one disgruntled worker bee who knows how to read, fer cryin’ out loud, and your goose may be cooked. (I like that analogy because they’re a poultry processing company… *grin*) And, of course, this is just an announcement of the lawsuit filing. Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. hasn’t actually at this point been determined to be guilty of any of these alleged nefarious doings.
Will be interesting to see how this one plays out. Sure, sure, sure, Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. is posting annual net sales of over $7 billion (yep, with a “b”), so it’s not as though $3 million is going to send them to the poorhouse. But that’s still a lot of moolah to have to cough up if the case doesn’t go their way.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, for sure.
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