Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

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O’NEILL, Neb. -- The U.S. Department of Labor today announced that Central Valley Agricultural Cooperative in O’Neill has agreed to pay a total of $47,547 to eight employees to correct violations of the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

“The Labor Department is committed to ensuring that workers receive all the wages they have earned,” said Percella Maupins, director of the department’s Wage and Hour Division district office in Des Moines, Iowa. “I am pleased that we were able to recover back wages for these workers.”

An investigation by the Wage and Hour Division found that the company, which operates 60 cooperatives in 45 northeast Nebraska locations, was paying a number of branch managers straight salary for hours varying between 40 and 70 per week. An examination of their duties showed that a high percentage of time was spent in manual labor such as mixing fertilizer, and loading and unloading vehicles. For these duties, the managers should have been paid an overtime premium for hours worked over 40 per week.

The company cooperated with the investigation and 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 rates of pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a single workweek. Employers also must maintain adequate and accurate records of employees’ wages, hours and other conditions of employment. The FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain job duty and salary tests.

The Wage and Hour Division concluded 31,987 compliance actions and recovered more than $171 million in back wages for more than 246,000 employees in fiscal year 2006. 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 about the FLSA, call the Department of Labor’s toll-free help line at (866) 4US-WAGE (487-9243), visit the Internet at www.wagehour.dol.gov or contact the Wage and Hour Division’s Des Moines District Office at (515) 284-4625. Information about the current exemption for white-collar executive and administrative employees can be found at www.dol.gov/fairpay.

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