Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

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DELTA, Pa. -- The Wackenhut Corp. has agreed to pay $129,953 in back wages to 157 employees at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pa., following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Wackenhut, which is headquartered in Miami, Fla., provides security services for both government and private sector clients nationwide.

The investigation determined that the company had violated the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when it paid workers a regular hourly rate regardless of how many hours they worked.

“When computing employee wages, the company failed to take into account the time it took security guards to perform a required procedure prior to the start of each shift,” said Alfonso J. Gristina, director of the Wage and Hour Division’s district office in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Gristina added that schedule changes during a midday shift also contributed to the problem.

The FLSA requires payment of the federal minimum wage and of overtime at time and one-half a covered employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 per week. An employer must count hours worked at the beginning or end of the workday that are part of the “principal activity” of an employee. The FLSA also contains recordkeeping requirements and youth employment standards.

The Wage and Hour Division concluded 31,987 compliance actions in fiscal year 2006 and recovered more than $171 million in back wages for more than 246,000 employees. Back-wage collections last year represent a 30 percent increase over back wages collected in fiscal year 2001. The number of workers receiving back wages has increased by 14 percent since 2001.

For more information, call the Department of Labor’s toll-free help line at (866) 4US-WAGE (487-9243). Information is also available on the Internet at www.wagehour.dol.gov.

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