WASHINGTON – A federal administrative law judge has ordered the operator of mining complexes in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky to pay civil penalties totaling $349,444 to resolve 533 citations for mine safety and health violations U.S. Department of Labor inspectors identified at 14 mines.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The opening of a federal investigation into the pay practices of a Haslett assisted living facility in the fall of 2021 prompted its owner to threaten employees with termination if they spoke with investigators and trick them into admitting whether or not they had cooperated with the investigation, a U.S. Department of Labor lawsuit filed on Feb. 3, 2023, alleges.   

BRAINTREE, MA – Four months after citing a Quincy roofing and construction contractor – with a long history of exposing its employees to dangerous fall hazards and who reneged on a 2017 federal settlement agreement – inspectors with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration discovered the employer again knowingly exposing workers to serious injuries or worse.

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.

CENTRAL ISLIP, NY – The operator of two Long Island restaurants may have thought they only had to take orders from customers, but now has learned that ignoring the orders of federal investigators and a federal court will get you arrested.

LAS VEGAS – After a 2013 investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor that recovered $47,393 from a Nevada paint and specialty coatings contractor and its owner whose illegal pay practices denied 21 Utah workers overtime wages, a reasonable employer might try to avoid repeating a bad and costly decision.

Cory Summerhays, owner of Unforgettable Coatings Inc. – a Las Vegas company operating in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada and Utah – chose instead to double down, and then some. 

BRECKENRIDGE, CO – The owner of a Vail construction company facing a felony manslaughter charge has surrendered to local law enforcement after the Summit County Judge Edward J. Casias issued an arrest warrant on Jan. 23, 2023, related to the findings of a federal safety investigation into a deadly trench collapse in November 2021.

BIRMINGHAM, AL – An Alabama plastics manufacturing company has pleaded guilty to a willful violation of workplace safety requirements as part of an agreement filed in federal court spurred initially by a U.S. Department of Labor investigation into a 45-year-old worker’s death in Helena in August 2017.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Alabama prosecuted the case.

Date of action:                       Jan. 17, 2023

Type of action:                      U.S. Department of Labor complaint

NEW YORK – The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting a Patterson nursery and garden supply business, and its president from threatening its employees and obstructing a U.S. Department of Labor investigation.

MINNEAPOLIS – The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment in federal court requiring a Minneapolis private in-home care provider to pay $1.6 million in back wages and damages, as part of the department’s effort to recover unpaid overtime wages for 136 healthcare workers in the Twin-Cities area.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A federal court has ordered the owner of a Haslett assisted living facility to pay $15,238 in back wages and damages to six healthcare workers, whom the employer failed to pay during meal breaks when their duties forced them to work during or through the breaks.

CARBONDALE, IL – The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a federal court order requiring a Carbondale café to pay 31 workers $98,400 in back wages and damages for operating an illegal tip pool, almost six months after a jury awarded the workers $4,900 – just 10 percent of their back wages – in what the department alleged was an error based on the jury’s instructions and how they interpreted the evidence at trial.

MADISON, WI – Five years after leaving their Guatemalan and Mexican homes for jobs promised by owners of two Wisconsin forestry companies and discovering they would not receive the wages, benefits and types of jobs described in their contracts, 263 workers will finally receive $1.1 million in unpaid wages after extensive federal investigations. 

DENVER – The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a complaint in federal court against the operator of a Firestone franchise restaurant who allegedly fired two workers whom the employer believed complained to the department’s Wage and Hour Division about the employer’s pay practice and participated in the investigation that followed.

NEW YORK – An administrative law judge with the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has affirmed U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration citations and $24,290 in penalties issued to Eustis Cable Enterprises Ltd., a Brookfield, Vermont, telecommunications contractor, following the death of an employee at an Andover, New York, worksite.

Fecha de la acción:   21 de noviembre de 2022

Tipo de acción:   Denuncia contra represalias

Tribunal: Tribunal Distrital de EE. UU. por el Distrito Este de Kentucky

Nombres de los acusados:   Ike’s Artisan Pizza LLC, propiedad de Isaac Martin Ausmus

Date of action:  Nov. 21, 2022

Type of action:  Anti-retaliation complaint

Court: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky

Names of defendants: Ike’s Artisan Pizza LLC, owner Isaac Martin Ausmus

CHICAGO – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs entered into a consent decree with Rosemount Inc. of Chanhassen, Minnesota, and its subsidiary, Rosemount Specialty Products LLC.

LINCOLN, NE – A federal court in Nebraska today entered a consent order and judgment in which Packers Sanitation Services Inc. LTD – one of the nation’s largest providers of food safety sanitation services – agreed to immediately comply with child labor laws at all facilities nationwide and to take significant steps to ensure future compliance, including employing an outside compliance specialist.