Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

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ST. LOUIS -- The U.S. Department of Labor today announced that Vatterott Educational Centers Inc., doing business as Vatterott College, St. Ann, Missouri, has paid a total of $191,246 to 304 employees in nine states to correct violations of the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The settlement includes Vatterott campuses in Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas.

“The department is committed to ensuring that workers receive all the wages they have earned,” said Enrique Rodriguez, district director for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage Hour Division in St. Louis. “I am pleased that we were able to recover more than $190,000 in back wages for these workers.”

The initial Wage and Hour investigation began with two Vatterott locations in Omaha, Neb., and was eventually expanded to include all but one of the 17 other campuses when it became apparent that the technical schools had similar violations throughout the company.

Violations included misclassification of non-exempt office employees as exempt from overtime rules, uncompensated overtime for hourly employees that was not “authorized,” and failure in some instances to simply pay the overtime premium for hours worked over 40 per week. The company cooperated with the investigation and has agreed to future compliance with the FLSA.

The FLSA requires that covered workers be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and one and one-half their regular rate of pay for hours worked over 40 in a single workweek. Employers must also maintain adequate and accurate records of employees’ wages, hours and other conditions of employment.

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 2001. The number of workers receiving back wages has increased by 14 percent since year 2001.

For more information about the FLSA, call the Department of Labor's toll-free help line at 1 (866) 4US-WAGE (487-9243) or contact the Wage and Hour Division’s district office in St. Louis at (314) 539-2706. Information is also available on the Internet at www.wagehour.dol.gov.

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