Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The U.S. Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division today announced it will continue its compliance initiative for Mississippi and Alabama day care industry employers. The department’s goal is to increase compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by sponsoring educational events and conducting on-site investigations at randomly selected day care and pre-school facilities.

“Employers have made substantial improvement since the compliance initiative began six years ago,” said Oliver Peebles III, director of the Wage and Hour’s Gulf Coast Division. “However, there is still room for improvement.”

During the past year, the most common problems found by Wage and Hour investigators included employers’ failure to: pay workers for time spent in required training classes and to add those hours to total hours worked; combine hours for employees who worked more than one job during a week; and pay employees an overtime rate when they worked more than 40 hours in a work week.

Peebles credited informal partnerships with state and private organizations for the substantial increase in industry compliance. The Mississippi Head Start Association, The Childcare Education Resources in Florence and Birmingham, Ala., and state licensing offices have taken an active part in assisting employers by sponsoring training sessions and compliance assistance seminars and providing fact sheets.

For more information about the compliance initiative, contact the Gulf Coast District Office at 950 22nd Street N., Suite 656, Birmingham, Ala., phone: (205) 731-1305; for information about the Fair Labor Standards Act and other laws administered by the Wage and Hour Division, call the Labor Department’s toll-free help line at 1-866-4USWAGE (1-866-487-9243), or visit the agency’s Web site at www.wagehour.dol.gov.

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U.S. Department of Labor releases are accessible on the Internet at www.dol.gov. The information in this news release will be made available in alternate format (large print, Braille, audio tape or disc) from the COAST office upon request. Please specify which news release when placing your request at (202) 693-7828 or TTY (202) 693-7755. The Labor Department is committed to providing America’s employers and employees with easy access to understandable information on how to comply with its laws and regulations. For more information, please visit www.dol.gov/compliance.