Roofing News

Florida Roofing Contractor Pays $31K in Back Wages After Illegally Denying Overtime

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A Florida roofing contractor is paying $31,673 in back wages for 30 workers after violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and not paying employees from a drug recovery program what they were owed.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, investigations into Perry Roofing Inc. — which operates as Perry Roofing Contractors — found the employer violated overtime and recordkeeping requirements of the FLSA. The division determined that Perry Roofing failed to include production-related and profit-sharing bonuses in the calculation when determining workers’ overtime rates. By doing so, the employer paid workers less for their overtime hours than the law requires. Perry Roofing also failed to record start and stop times for workers paid by piece-rate.

Investigators also found the employer illegally banked regular and overtime earnings for workers recruited from Gainesville’s Santa Fe Bridge Community Work Release Center, a substance abuse treatment facility. Perry Roofing paid the release center workers minimum wage for the first 40 hours worked, but withheld the difference between the workers’ hourly rate and the minimum wage rate and payment for overtime hours. Instead, Perry Roofing had workers "draw from the overtime bank as needed in the form of gift cards or other advances," according to the division.

The law requires employers to pay workers for all the hours they have worked on their regular payday.

“Employers must pay their workers all of the wages they have earned. This case shows the Wage and Hour Division’s commitment to respect and protect workers, and to ensure that happens,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Wildalí De Jesús, in Orlando, Florida. “We encourage other employers to use this investigation’s outcome as an opportunity to review their own pay practices to ensure they comply with the law.”