U.S. Department of Labor issued the following announcement on Jan. 2.
A Bay Area employer providing environmental, labor and social responsibility audits will pay $54,121 in back wages to 10 employees and an additional $5,640 in penalties after a U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division (WHD) investigation found the company violated overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
WHD investigators found Elevate U.S. Limited LLC erroneously considered its lead auditors to be exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements and paid them flat salaries without regard to the number of hours that they worked. This practice resulted in violations when those employees worked more than 40 hours in a workweek but were not paid overtime. The employer also violated FLSA recordkeeping requirements when it failed to record the total number of hours employees actually worked.
“Employers are required to pay their employees the wages they have legally earned for all the hours that they work,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Susana Blanco in San Jose, California. “Simply paying employees a salary does not necessarily mean they are not entitled to overtime. The U.S. Department of Labor is committed to educating employers and improving compliance with federal wage laws to ensure workers receive the wages they have earned and that employers compete on a level playing field.”
Original source can be found here.