BOISE — A federal court and the department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges have ordered an Oakley stone quarry to pay $983,725 in back wages and liquidated damages after U.S. Department of Labor investigators found that the employer violated multiple federal labor laws, which denied 60 workers their rightfully earned wages.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho entered a consent judgment requiring Northern Stone Supply Inc. and its owner Gregory Osterhout to pay $373,608 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages to the affected employees. In a corresponding case, the department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges ordered the employer to pay $236,509 in back wages and $50,000 in civil money penalties assessed by the department for the employer’s willful violations of the H-2B program.

The department’s Wage and Hour Division investigation from April 2019 to November 2021 found numerous violations by Northern Stone Supply Inc. of H-2B temporary foreign nonagricultural worker program regulations and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Specifically, the H-2B violations included the following:

• Discriminated against U.S. workers by offering significantly more hours to H-2B workers.
• Paid less than the wage stated in the job order.
• Improperly classified workers with lower-paying job designations than the work performed.
• Failed to keep proper employee records with respect to worker earnings.
• Did not provide items necessary to perform work free of...

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