A federal court has ordered a prominent Long Island, New York, Thoroughbred racing stable and its owner to pay a total of $132,631 in back wages and liquidated damages to 52 grooms and hot walkers at several locations, including Belmont and Aqueduct racetracks. The stable owner failed to pay workers the overtime wages they earned.
The action by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York follows an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. Investigators found that Danny Gargan and Gargan Stables Corp. paid certain employees at the racetracks, stables and other locations a fee per horse handled and not per hour as stated in their payroll records.
In addition to shortchanging workers' hours and unlawfully denying them overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, the division determined the employer falsified payroll records to give the appearance that employees were paid by the hour when they were not. The court affirmed the department's assessment of $37,368 in civil money penalties for willful wage theft and for falsifying records in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Following the division's investigation and litigation by the department's Office of the Solicitor, the court entered a consent judgment ordering the defendants to pay $66,315 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages to the affected workers.
The judgment also requires the defendants to:
– Hire, at their own expense, a qualified...
Conspiracy theories around Artemis II have spread online after the crew returned safely from its lunar mission, with fake NASA claims and old Apollo 11 hoax stories gaining traction on social medi...