ATLANTA – The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, against a Peachtree City auto repair shop and its owner seeking $36,971 in back wages and liquidated damages after investigators found they violated the retaliation, overtime and recordkeeping prohibitions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The department’s Wage and Hour Division determined that Miles Walker, the owner of 811 Autoworks LLC – operating as A OK Walker Autoworks – retaliated against one employee who contacted the agency after he resigned and the employer failed to pay his final wages.
The department’s complaint alleges that Walker paid the former employee’s final wages of $915 by delivering about 91,500 oil-covered pennies and a pay stub marked with an expletive to the worker’s home – blocking and staining his driveway and requiring nearly seven hours for him to remove – as well as publishing defamatory statements about the former employee on the company’s website.
The division also determined that Walker violated the FLSA’s overtime provisions by paying other employees straight time for all hours worked, failing to pay legally required overtime rate when they worked over 40 hours in a workweek. In addition, the defendant also failed to keep adequate and accurate records of employees’ pay rates and work hours. The department seeks to enjoin the defendant permanently from future FLSA retaliation, overtime and recordkeeping violations.
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