U.S. Department of Labor Awards Back Pay for Misclassified Employees
The Associated Press is reporting that the United States Department of Labor has awarded back pay totaling $187,165 to sixty-nine employees of Groundwater and Environmental Services, Inc. The DOL, as part of an ongoing enforcement effort that has recently focused on the oil and gas industry, determined that GES violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it misclassified certain employees, thereby improperly denying them overtime pay when they worked in excess of forty hours per week. The DOL also determined that GES failed to keep accurate records of hours worked by those employees, also a violation of the FLSA. GES claimed that the employees – many of whom are junior environmental scientists and junior baseline samplers based in Cranberry, Pennsylvania or Fairmont, West Virginia – were exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements on the grounds that they are professionals. The DOL disagreed, determining that the employees did not fall under the FLSA’s professional exemption because they are not required to have advanced knowledge to perform their jobs.