ORLANDO, FL – Investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor of 11 central Florida heating, ventilation and air conditioning contractors have recovered more than $113,000 in back wages and liquidated damages for 169 workers whose employers’ illegal pay practices denied them their full wages.
The department’s Wage and Hour Division investigators identified a wide variety of violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act by the contractors that undercut their employees’ wages. Some failed to include bonuses and commissions in workers’ rates of pay when calculating overtime and, as a result, paid overtime at rates lower than those permitted by law for hours over 40 in a workweek.
Investigators found that other contractors failed to combine hours of work when employees performed different jobs for the same employer. For example, an employer paid workers by the hour for work on new construction and on a piece-rate basis for direct service to customers but did not combine the hours worked each week for the purpose of determining and paying overtime due. In another violation of overtime regulations, an employer awarded employees compensatory time off on an hour-for-hour basis for hours over 40 in a workweek, when the law requires these workers be paid a time-and-one-half rate.
In all of the investigations, the division cited employers for failing to keep accurate payroll records.
The 11 investigations included six entities owned by David Cox, Ryan Cox and Richard Allard, and operated...
Claims linking Melania Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have circulated widely across platforms. Two viral allegations gained particular traction: first, that Emmanuel Macron shared...