Local firm agrees to pay $37K after Labor investigation

FILE

FILE

A Lebanon company has agreed to pay 84 employees a total of $37,658 – representing $18,829 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages – after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Labor Department investigators found Visions Matter LLC “failed to pay workers for time spent in work-related training, resulting in overtime violations when that unpaid time occurred during workweeks when employees worked more than 40 hours,” the department announced Wednesday.

Visions Matter provides services to individuals with development disabilities, the department said.

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Additional overtime violations resulted from the employer’s practice of paying overtime after employees worked 80 hours in two weeks, instead of after 40 hours in a single workweek, as the law requires, according to an account by the Labor Department.

Someone who answered the phone at Visions Matter’s Lebanon office Wednesday afternoon said he could not answer questions.

The operation also failed to maintain required records of each employee’s daily and weekly hours worked and overtime pay rate, resulting in record-keeping violations, the government charged.

“The Wage and Hour Division works to ensure employers in all industries comply with federal law so that every employee receives the wages they have rightfully earned,” said George Victory, director of the department’s Wage and Hour District in Columbus. “Employers must understand their responsibility to track and record all of the time their employees spend working. We encourage employers to use the wide variety of compliance tools we offer to explain those requirements, and to contact us for guidance.”

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