Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

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IRVING, Texas -- The U.S. Department of Labor announced today that HKC Group Inc. in Irving, Texas, will pay 160 present and former cashiers and customer service employees $154,828 in back wages to correct violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The retail grocery stores, doing business as Komart Market Place, agreed to the payments following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

“The employer was not properly paying its workers minimum wage or overtime pay they have rightfully earned,” said Cynthia Watson, the Wage and Hour Division’s regional administrator for the Southwest. “Some employees worked as many as 60 hours in a work week without receiving overtime compensation. This is illegal.”

The investigation by the Wage and Hour Division’s office in Dallas covered the two-year period Nov. 1, 2003 to Oct. 29, 2005 and found overtime, minimum wage and recordkeeping violations of the FLSA at the company’s three locations in Irving, Dallas and Houston. Although non-exempt employees were paid on a salary basis, their salaries were not sufficient to cover the minimum wage for all hours they worked. Additionally, the required payroll records were incomplete.

The FLSA requires employees to be paid the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and time and one-half their regular rate of pay for hours worked over 40 per week. Employers must also maintain accurate time and payroll records.

HKC Group cooperated with the investigation and has agreed to future compliance. Back wages will be paid by December 2007.

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 Wage and Hour Division’s district office in Dallas at (817) 861-2150, its metro number at (817) 261-4371, or the Department of Labor’s toll-free line at 1 (866) 4US-WAGE (487-9243). Information is also available at www.wagehour.dol.gov. Information on exemptions from overtime for executive, administrative and professional employees can be found at www.dol.gov/fairpay.

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