June/July 2006 Wage & Hour News

• Gulf Coast Employers Agree to Pay Over $362,000 in Back Wages for 680 Workers Engaged In Hurricane Clean-Up and Rebuilding
• DOL Launches New Online Back Wage Employee Locator

Gulf Coast Employers Agree to Pay Over $362,000 in Back Wages for 680 Workers Engaged In Hurricane Clean-Up and Rebuilding (6/12/06) - DOL

The U.S. Labor Department announced today that it has obtained agreements from three companies to pay a total of $362,673 in back wages for 680 employees in the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast region. The companies are involved in the clean-up and reconstruction of casinos along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and have agreed to pay the back wages for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), following investigations by the department's Wage and Hour Division.

"To better protect workers helping with hurricane recovery and rebuilding, last fall the Department of Labor deployed additional investigators to ensure that employers complied with wage and hour laws," said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. "This stepped-up and targeted enforcement has resulted in the recovery of more than $362,000 in back wages for these workers."

Wage and Hour investigators determined that Remza Drywall & Construction Inc. of Lewisville, Texas; Atlantida Construction Inc. of Duluth, Ga., and H & H LLC of Biloxi, Miss. failed to pay their employees time and one-half their regular rate of pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. All three of the firms misclassified employees as independent contractors and failed to pay the required overtime compensation.

Under the FLSA, covered employees must be paid time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek. In the Gulf Coast region, Wage and Hour investigators have encountered the practice of employers misclassifying workers as independent contractors, although they fail to meet the legal test for independent status.

These investigations were conducted as part of Wage and Hour's ongoing hurricane-related initiative to ensure that workers involved in clean-up and reconstruction activities are being properly compensated. Wage and Hour has dispatched additional investigators to the Gulf Coast region and created a Gulf Coast Task Force to provide increased enforcement support and boost compliance outreach activities.

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DOL Launches New Online Back Wage Employee Locator (6/1/06) - DOL

The U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) today launched a new Web-based back wage employee locator to provide easy and secure access for employees to find and collect back wages due to them.

The new back wage employee locator guides employees through an online series of questions that helps them determine if they are owed back wages as a result of a WHD investigation. The new system queries a database that contains information about people who are due back wages and their employment history. Employees should be ready to enter information about their past or present employment, such as the name and location of their employer. Those due back wages will be provided restitution upon verification of their identity.

"The U.S. Department of Labor is pleased to be able to implement this new locator program," said Alfred B. Robinson Jr., acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. "Although the Wage and Hour Division locates most of the employees due back wages, we expect this effort to facilitate payment to many of those employees that we have been unable to find."

This new electronic program is part of an ongoing effort at the DOL to meet the e-government objectives of the president's management agenda. The back wage employee locator is accessible from the Wage and Hour Division's home page at www.wagehour.dol.gov or directly at www.dol-esa.gov/emploc.

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