Employer:  Force Construction Company Inc., Columbus, Indiana

Investigation findings:  U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigators recovered $46,125 in back wages for 35 employees after evaluating the company’s pay practices on 10 government contracts.

Investigators determined the construction company violated the Davis Bacon and Related Acts and the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act by:

• Exceeding the number of apprentices permitted under their respective apprenticeship programs in ratio to journeymen.
• Failing to pay the applicable basic hourly rate to all laborers and mechanics on the job site. This resulted in overtime being calculated and paid at the wrong rate. Some workers were paid a percentage of the required rate when they should have been paid the full hourly rate.

Back Wages Recovered: $46,125 in overtime back wages for 35 employees.                                               

Quote: “As more companies negotiate contracts for projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, they must fully understand the specific wage rules that govern government contracts,” explained Acting Wage and Hour Division District Director Fernando Hernandez in Indianapolis.

Background: Learn more about Protections for Workers in Construction under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division and how to file an online complaint. For confidential compliance assistance, employees and employers can call the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243), regardless of where they are from.

Download the agency’s new Timesheet App for iOS and Android devices – also available in Spanish –to ensure hours and pay are accurate.

Employer:  Ameritalia LLC, operating as Coco’s Italian Market and Restaurants                                                           

Investigation site: 411 51st Avenue N., Nashville, TN 37209

Investigation findings: The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found the employer failed to combine hours worked by three employees at multiple locations, instead issuing them separate checks for each establishment. By doing so, the employer failed to pay them the overtime premium for hours over 40 in a workweek. Ameritalia also paid 19 kitchen workers an hourly rate and arbitrarily switched them to a salary wage without overtime compensation for hours over 40 in a workweek. The employer also failed to pay a former manager, who was paid on an hourly basis, overtime wages when required. All of these actions violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

Back wages recovered for workers:  $82,059 for 23 employees.                                               

Quote: “Restaurant workers are among our community’s lowest-paid workers. Employers who fail to pay these workers all of their legally earned wages make it harder for them to make ends meet,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Lisa Kelly in Nashville, Tennessee. “The Wage and Hour Division is able to provide resources to both employers and employees to help understand their responsibilities and rights under the law.”

Background: Coco’s Italian Market and Restaurants includes a mini-retail market, selling grocery items and prepared food to the public.

Employers can contact the Wage and Hour Division at its toll-free number, 1-866-4-US-WAGE. Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including numerous online resources for employers, such as a fact sheet on overtime pay requirements of the FLSA. Workers can call the Wage and Hour Division confidentially with questions – regardless of their immigration status – and the department can speak with callers in more than 200 languages. Workers and employers alike can help ensure hours worked and pay are accurate by downloading the department’s Android Timesheet App for free.

NEW CASTLE, PA – A federal investigation into why a 17-year-old worker – who fell 24 feet from the roof of a New Castle, Pennsylvania, home improvement store in October 2022 – was doing work that violated child labor laws led to a wider review into how the roofing contractor failed to pay 30 employees their full wages and exposed other workers to dangerous fall hazards.

The U.S. Department of Labor found JVS Roofing of Jonesboro, Georgia, hired the teenager for roofing work, an occupation defined as hazardous for young workers by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The young worker sustained minor injuries after the fall.

Further investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division into the employer’s pay practices found JVS misclassified 30 workers as independent contractors. By doing so, the employer illegally exempted them from overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. The division also learned JVS failed to keep full and accurate payroll records.

The division recovered $92,640 in back wages for the affected workers, and the department has received the employer’s payment of a $6,399 civil money penalty assessed for the child labor violation.

“JVS Roofing ignored federal child labor laws and hired an underage employee to do prohibited roofing work,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director John DuMont in Pittsburgh. “In reviewing this incident, our investigators then determined that the employer shortchanged workers an average of $3,000 per employee in earned overtime by misclassifying them as independent contractors.”

A subsequent investigation by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found JVS Roofing failed to provide employees with required fall protection, did not provide related training and allowed employees to work without a fall protection system in place.

OSHA issued the company a citation for four serious safety violations and proposed $16,500 in penalties, which the company has paid.

“Putting a child to work on a roof is irresponsible and a violation of federal safety laws,” said OSHA Area Director Brendan Claybaugh in Erie, Pennsylvania. “Fall hazards are well-known by employers and they remain a leading cause of serious injury and deaths in the construction industry. There is simply no place for such reckless behavior.”

Mid-South Contractors – operating as Mid-South Roof Systems in Forest Park, Georgia – subcontracted JVS Roofing to perform roofing work atop the Lowe’s store in New Castle at the time of the teen’s injuries.

The injured teen worker is one of 688 minors the division found employed in hazardous occupations during investigations in fiscal year 2022, the highest annual count since fiscal year 2011.

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including about its protections for young workers on the department’s YouthRules! Website. The division also maintains a search tool to learn if you are owed back wages collected by the division. Help ensure hours worked and pay are accurate by downloading the department’s Android and iOS Timesheet App for free, available in English and Spanish.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there were 123 fatalities in the roofing industry in 2021, 99 of which were from falls, slips or trips. OSHA’s stop falls website offers safety information and video presentations in English and Spanish to teach workers about fall hazards and proper safety procedures.

Learn more about OSHA.

Employer name:                   Amazing Grace PCA LLC

Investigation site:                7321 Bullard Ave.

                                                          Orleans, LA 70128

Investigation findings: The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found Amazing Grace PCA, a home health care provider, misclassified 77 workers as independent contractors which denied them of overtime wages for hours over 40 in a workweek. The employer also failed to pay one worker for all hours worked that led to violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage provisions.

Back wages recovered:         $79,362 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages.

Quote: “Misclassification of employees as independent contractors is a serious issue that denies many workers of their full and rightfully earned wages. Healthcare workers are among our nation’s most essential workers and their employers cannot shortchange them for their hard work,” said Wage and Hour District Director Troy Mouton in New Orleans. “The Wage and Hour Division remains committed to battling misclassification and will hold employers who misclassify their workers accountable for back wages and liquidated damages.”

SAN DIEGO – In its continuing effort to combat labor abuses of foreign workers in Southern California’s logistics and warehousing industries, the U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $1.1 million from two companies operating in the San Diego area – Freig Carrillo Forwarding Inc. and ACV Logistics Inc. – for 50 Mexican nationals, some paid as little as $2.43 an hour.

Federal investigators found the employers used affiliates to pay the affected workers in Mexican Pesos by direct deposit each week.

Since 2021, the department has recovered more than $2.2 million from other San Diego employers after the department’s Wage and Hour Division found they used similar labor practices to exploit workers.

The recent recovery comes after the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California entered a consent judgment and order on March 9, 2023, in which Freig Carrillo Forwarding Inc. and owner, Javier Martin Freig Carrillo must pay $1 million in back wages and damages to 35 workers, $400,000 of which must be paid within 15 days with monthly payments of $16,928 for three years. The employer must also pay $26,215 in civil money penalties for its egregious violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

“The department’s ongoing work in this industry along the Southern border puts other U.S. employers on notice that we will not tolerate these kinds of exploitive labor practices,” said Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda. “An employee’s citizenship has no bearing on whether the Fair Labor Standards Act’s protections apply to them. We will continue to combat wage theft aggressively on behalf of all workers covered by the statute.”

The court’s action follows a division investigation of Freig Carrillo Forwarding’s pay practices from December 2019 through December 2021 that found the employer denied minimum wage and overtime wages to Mexican nationals working at its San Diego warehouses. On average, investigators determined that the company paid workers as little as $3.24 and that they typically paid workers in Mexican Pesos for workweeks that averaged nearly 45 hours at a flat rate of $180-$200 per week.

Investigators also examined ACV Logistics Inc.’s payroll records from April 7, 2020 to April 6, 2022, and found similar violations and that the company paid some workers as little as $2.43 an hour. The employer and its owner Armando Carrillo agreed to a settlement with the department and paid $70,104 in back wages and liquidated damages to 15 Mexican nationals. In addition, the department assessed the employer $12,105 in civil money penalties for their egregious FLSA violations.

“The enforcement actions announced today are part of our ongoing effort to root out abusive labor practices by employers operating in the customs warehouse industry,” said Principal Deputy Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman. “The idea that some employers are paying people working in the U.S. – regardless of where they call home – an hourly rate equal to the price of a bottle of water is intolerable. All employers should pay their workers working in the U.S. as federal, state and local laws require.”

“The Department of Labor is committed to enforcing all federal labor laws to protect all U.S. workers and to working with its state and local law enforcement partners to ensure that all workers receive the highest applicable minimum wage and all overtime owed,” Looman added.

In addition to ordering the payment of back wages, liquidated damages and penalties, the companies must also immediately change their payroll practices and recordkeeping to comply with the FLSA and provide their workers with information in their spoken language on their FLSA rights.

The division and the Consulate General of Mexico in San Diego are working together to ensure Mexican nationals in the region are aware of their labor rights as U.S. workers, including the right to report labor violations without fear of threats and intimidation.

Headquartered in Mexico in Nogales, Sonora, Freig Carillo Forwarding Inc. is a custom broker company that provides logistic and transportation services for goods traveling between U.S. and Mexico. The company has offices in San Diego and Baja California; Nogales, Arizona; and in other locations in Mexico.

Based in San Diego, ACV Logistics Inc. provides transportation, import-export and international relocation services to industrial, commercial and residential customers in the U.S. In addition to its San Diego headquarters, the company operates offices in Mexico in La Paz, Los Cabos, and Tijuana, Baja California.

Consul General of Mexico Carlos González Gutierrez in San Diego encourages Mexican workers to contact the consulate at 619-231-3847 or at proteccion@consulmexsd.org for support, consular protection or free legal advice.  

The division’s San Diego District Office investigated these cases, and the Office of the Solicitor in San Francisco negotiated the consent judgment on behalf of the department.

To further combat egregious wage violations in the industry, the department will hold an information session on March 21, organized by the Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce, to educate employers on labor practices.

The division enforces the law regardless of a worker’s immigration status and can speak confidentially with callers in more than 200 languages. For more information about the FLSA and other laws enforced by the division, contact its toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division.

This news release is also available in Spanish.

ALGOOD, TN – The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $42,373 for 44 employees after finding an Algood restaurant illegally kept tips that employees earned.

The department’s Wage and Hour Division found McCurdy Enterprises LLC – operating as Red Oak Roasters – withheld the tips and used that money to inflate hourly wages by dividing it among workers, including managers. Investigators also found Red Oak Roasters incorrectly classified a salaried employee as exempt from overtime. By doing so, the employer failed to pay overtime premiums to this employee for hours over 40 in a workweek.

“What Red Oak Roasters did is wage theft, plain and simple. Tips are the property of the employees who earn them and rewards them for providing good service to customers,” said Wage and Hour District Director Lisa Kelly in Nashville, Tennessee. “Employers have no right to keep those earned tips and use them to reduce their cost of doing business.”

In addition, the division found the employer allowed five minor-aged employees to engage in prohibited and hazardous activities by operating a vertical dough mixing machine, a violation of the federal child labor standards. The division assessed Red Oak Roasters a $9,900 civil penalty to address the child labor violations.

“In addition to wage theft, our investigators found alarming child labor violations,” Kelly added. “Power-driven bakery machines have the potential to cause serious injuries to even experienced workers. Allowing minor-aged workers – in this case 16 and 17-year-olds – to operate these machines is both troubling and illegal.”

Wage and Hour Division investigators recovered more than $27 million for more than 22,500 workers in the food service industry in fiscal year 2022. In fiscal years 2020 and 2021, the Wage and Hour Division’s Southeast region found child labor violations in more than 190 food service employers investigated, resulting in more than $1 million in penalties assessed to employers.

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including tip regulations under the FLSA and also a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Workers can call the Wage and Hour Division confidentially with questions – regardless of where they are from – and the department can speak with callers in more than 200 languages.

BIRMINGHAM, AL – Work in a poultry catching facility is hard, where people commonly face the risks of working with dangerous equipment, on slippery floors, around hazardous chemicals, and are exposed to the possibility of illness for those handling live birds and the waste and dust they produce. Standing for long hours also greatly increases the risks of musculoskeletal disorders.

At two poultry catching facilities in Alabama and North Carolina, the owner made work even more difficult for 322 employees by denying them their full earned wages, a U.S. Department of Labor investigation has found.

Investigators with the department’s Wage and Hour Division determined that Native Poultry LLC in Enterprise, Alabama, and Poultry Labor Solutions Inc. in Newton, North Carolina – which share ownership – did not pay proper overtime wages at the additional half-time premium pay to employees working as catchers, loaders, and leads. They also found the employers only paid the proper overtime premium rates for weekend work and not when employees worked over 40 hours during the typical workweek. Their actions violated overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. These catching companies support the poultry growing and processing operations of Wayne Farms LLC, in Dothan, Alabama, and Case Farms LLC in Troutman, North Carolina.  

The division’s investigation recovered $353,141 in back wages for the affected workers whose annual mean wage for their occupation, a Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2021 survey found, ranges from $25,930 in Alabama to $31,640 in North Carolina.

“The workers in these cases handle an important step in food operations that is not mechanized, and their labor is essential to the industry,” said Regional Administrator Juan Coria in Atlanta, Georgia. “More than 100 birds can be processed by hand every 30 minutes so the teams employed there can face difficult conditions.”

“Employers like Native Poultry and Poultry Labor Solutions have a legal obligation to make sure their employees – people who help put food on our tables – are paid their full earned wages,” added Coria.

BLS estimates about 95,000 people work in animal slaughtering and processing industry in the U.S.

The Wage and Hour Division offers multiple tools to help employers understand their responsibilities and offers confidential compliance assistance to anyone with questions about how to comply with the law, by calling the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). The department can speak with callers in more than 200 languages. Visit the agency’s website to learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including tip regulations under the FLSA.

The agency also maintains a search tool to learn if you are owed back wages collected by the division. Help ensure hours worked and pay are accurate by downloading the department’s Android and iOS Timesheet App for free.

Learn more about Wage and Hour Division.

Read this news release En Español.

WASHINGTON – For women working in the U.S., the date of Equal Pay Day isn’t a day of celebration. Rather, the day is a reminder that it takes women 15 months to earn the same amount as men earned in 12 months.

Today is Equal Pay Day in 2023, a reminder of systemic inequality faced by women and especially those of color. In the U.S., women who work full-time, year-round, are paid an average of 83.7 percent as much as men, which amounts to a difference of $10,000 per year. The gaps are even larger for many women of color and women with disabilities.

“Equal Pay Day – the day of the year when women working in the U.S. finally earn the same amount as men did in the year before – is an unfortunate reminder that historic wage inequity continues,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su. “The Biden-Harris administration has made unprecedented investments through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act and remains determined to remove barriers that prevent women from obtaining good-paying jobs found in the projects these investments will fund to help close the gender wage gap.”

The U.S. Department of Labor has several agency initiatives underway to combat gender and racial pay disparities in the workforce and ensure equity in the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Chips and Science and Inflation Reduction acts. They include the following:

• The launch of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ Mega Construction Project Program to foster equal opportunity in the construction trades workforce by removing hiring barriers and promoting diversity as qualified workers are considered for construction jobs. Read an OFCCP fact sheet to help employers take proactive approaches to pay equity.
• The Employment and Training Administration’s March 6, 2023, announcement of a cooperative agreement of nearly $20 million to support TradesFutures, the National Urban League and their community partners in developing a strategy to substantially increase the number of participants from underrepresented populations – including women and underserved communities – in Registered Apprenticeships in the construction industry. The effort will enroll more than 13,000 participants in apprenticeship readiness programs and place at least 7,000 participants in construction industry Registered Apprenticeships.
• Publication by the Women’s Bureau of a brief on the causes of the gender wage gap, including new statistics and analyses of gender and racial wage gaps, and a second brief on salary history bans legislation that prohibit employers from asking about prior salaries as a way to promote equal pay includes historic information on equal pay legislation and policymaking, salary history bans’ benefits and design and other policies for closing the gender wage gap.
• The ongoing Good Jobs Initiative provides tools with practical strategies to increase equal employment opportunities on infrastructure projects, including using Project Labor Agreements as Tools for Equity and establishing Access and Opportunity Committees, stakeholder groups that meet regularly to monitor and support diversity and equity goals on a specific project.

“To build an inclusive economy, we need to enable workers to obtain jobs based on their interests, skills and aptitude rather than gender, race or ethnicity, and promote good-paying jobs that follow fair wage setting practices, like those found in union employment, to help to eliminate the wage gap,” Acting Secretary Su added.

Learn more about Equal Pay and Pay Transparency Protections.

TAMPA, FL – A U.S. Department of Labor probe into how a Boca Grande resort used the federal H-2B program to employ guest visa workers for seasonal labor has recovered $151,598 in back wages for nine non-immigrant workers and led to $49,401 in civil money penalties for the resort.

The resort recently completed payment of the back wages and fines after it failed to provide documentation to support its February 2022 challenge of the findings of the department’s Wage and Hour Division. In November 2022, the employer entered into a consent agreement before the Office of Administrative Law Judges.

The resolution ends the division investigation that determined Gasparilla Inn & Club violated the temporary H-2B worker visa program by doing the following:

• Applied an uncertified job qualification, and applied their qualification arbitrarily, giving preference to less-qualified H-2B applicants.
• Imposed additional restrictions or obligations on U.S. workers and offered better working conditions to H-2B workers.
• Hired two workers for first-line job duties, but assigned them supervisory duties.
• Failed to reimburse visa fees to some workers, and made others wait years for their fees reimbursement.

“Federal law protects nonimmigrant workers employed under the H-2B program and Gasparilla Inn & Club violated those requirements,” said Wage and Hour District Director Nicolas Ratmiroff in Tampa, Florida. “All workers, both U.S. and non-immigrant workers, must be paid their lawful wages. Employers who reap the benefits of the H-2B program are obligated to make sure they understand and comply with program requirements.”

The federal H-2B visa program permits employers to temporarily hire nonimmigrants to perform nonagricultural labor or services in the U.S. The employment must be temporary in nature and be for a limited specific period of time, such as a one-time occurrence, seasonal, peak load or intermittent need.

Established in 1913, the Gasparilla Inn & Club is a resort located on Gasparilla Island on the Gulf of Mexico.

For more information about the FLSA and other laws enforced by the Wage and Hour Division, contact the division’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Download the agency’s new Timesheet App for Android devices to ensure hours and pay are accurate.

Employer name:                    C & C Steel LLC                                    

Investigation site:                 8889 Gateway Blvd. W
                                                        El Paso, TX 79925             

Investigation findings: The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found the employer, a Helena, Alabama, construction contractor, paid its workers straight time for all hours worked and failed to pay overtime for hours over 40 in a workweek, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The division also discovered the employer failed to pay an employee for one day of work which violated minimum wage provisions of the act.

Back wages recovered:  $23,116 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages to 14 workers.                                              

Quote: “C & C Steel deprived 14 construction workers of their hard-earned wages, including overtime the employer should have paid,” said Wage Hour Division District Director Evelyn Ortiz in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Failing to pay workers properly can force them to choose between paying the rent and buying groceries. Workers depend on every dollar for which they worked.”

Lea en Español