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A Boca Raton engineering contractor showed workplace diversity in its attempted avoidance of paying proper overtime pay, a Department of Labor investigation found.
EMS Site Development has paid $51,623 to 61 employees, Labor said, or about $846.28 per shorted employee.
Labor’s Wage and Hour Division investigators describe an overtime avoidance system of twos.
Two types of employees shorted: EMS Site Development’s office staff got paid flat salaries, no matter how many hours they worked. As Wage and Hour Division Deputy Administrator Keith Sonderling said in a statement, “Simply paying employees a salary does not mean that they are not entitled to overtime.”
As for the field staff, EMS counted overtime not based on a 40-hour work week, but an 80-hour work fortnight. That new payment math doesn’t work legally.
Two companies: EMS Site Development, run by Jude Endres and Raul Scherrer since at least the company first registered to do business in Florida, and Scherrer-owned EMS Rolloff.
When employees who toiled for both companies worked more than 40 hours, they were paid with two separate checks, each with straight time. Investigators found the two companies weren’t separate enough for the combined time to be separated in that manner and should’ve been counted as overtime eligible.
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