Dive Brief:
- Canton Petroleum will pay $64,146 in unpaid wages and liquidated damages after the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) determined that the company's occasional cash overtime payments violated the Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime pay and recordkeeping requirements.
- DOL's Wage and Hour Division conducted an investigation and concluded that the Michigan-based gas station and convenience store failed to pay employees required overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek. DOL said Canton paid employees $100 cash on an occasional basis, without regard to the number of overtime hours actually worked. The company also failed to maintain accurate records of the number of hours employees worked and to post the FLSA requirements.
- "Failing to pay hard-earned overtime hurts employees, and places other employers at a competitive disadvantage," a WHD district director, Timolin Mitchell, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the minimum wage for all hours worked, plus time-and-one-half their regular rates for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek.
Employers also must maintain accurate time and payroll records. The FLSA doesn't specify a particular form, but does require that the records include certain identifying information about the employee and accurate data about the hours worked and the wages earned. Records on which wage computations are based, such as time cards and piece work tickets, should be kept for two years, according to DOL.
In addition, employers subject to the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime requirements must post a notice explaining the law in a conspicuous place in all of its establishments so as to permit employees to easily read it, DOL said.
Employers who fail to meet certain requirements can be subject to liquidated damages — or "double damages" — as Canton was. DOL typically reserves that type of assessment for when a violation was committed in bad faith.
