US Department of Labor resolves wage violations, West Hartford moving, storage company pays $41K to 22 employees

HARTFORD, CT – The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered a total of $41,221 for 22 workers employed by a West Hartford moving and storage company and its subsidiary that provided bulk mail delivery service under a contract with the U.S. Postal Service.

Investigators with the department’s Wage and Hour Division determined that Woodland Moving and Warehouse Inc. and subsidiary ARL Transportation LLC failed to pay the correct prevailing wage rate, and holiday and vacation pay for some drivers under the Service Contract Act. As a result, the employer paid $32,808 to 22 employees.

Woodland Moving also paid $8,413 to one employee to correct an overtime violation that resulted from its misapplication of the Fair Labor Standard’s Act’s executive exemption to an operations manager who was an hourly employee and wasn’t paid time-and-a-half overtime until he worked 60 hours, a federal overtime violation.

“Federal contractors must know and comply with the requirements of the Service Contract Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The violations found during this investigation were preventable,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Donald Epifano in Hartford, Connecticut. “We encourage employers with questions and concerns about their responsibilities and employees with questions about their rights under federal wage laws to contact the Wage and Hour Division.”

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that most employees in the U.S. be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time-and-one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek.

The Service Contract Act requires contractors and subcontractors performing services under prime contracts in excess of $2,500 to pay service employees in various classes no less than the wage rates and fringe benefits found prevailing in the locality.

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Employers and workers can call the division confidentially with questions, regardless of where they are from. The department can speak with callers confidentially in more than 200 languages through the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). Download the agency’s new Timesheet App for i-OS and Android devices to ensure hours and pay are accurate.