Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

A Nashville car wash company has reached a settlement with three employees who claim they weren’t paid for several hours of work. The minimum-wage employees sued Shur-Brite Hi Speed Car Wash, alleging the company’s owners clocked them in and out throughout the day, depending on how busy their work shifts were. The agreed settlement for $130,000 will be distributed among 120 employees, who, like the plaintiffs, weren’t being paid for hours spent on the job.

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and hour Division has ordered a Suwanee, Georgia-based demolition company to pay a steep penalty for violating child labor laws after a teenage employee died on the work site. The teenager, an employee of Demon Demo Inc., was working on a demolition site at Macy’s in the Gwinnett Place Mall when he fell from the third story of the building. The boy had been tossing debris off the building when he fell.

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If a group of Brazilian workers is believed, some U.S. companies are still practicing a form of indentured servitude. According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. Distrcit Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, a group of Brazilian welders and pipefitters came to the U.S. as temporary H-2B guest workers for American recruiters that provide workers for shipyards. According to the suit, the workers came to this country “on promises of consistent, well compensated work at a reputable shipyard through a regulated U.S. government program.”

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An attorney representing a healthcare worker who is suing his employer for denied overtime says that lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act may become more common during the economic recession. The plaintiff alleges that his employer, Delta-T Group and Delta-T Group Social Service Staffing, Inc. denied him overtime compensation by wrongly classifying him as an independent contractor. Because he is not appropriately classified as an employee of the company, the plaintiff cannot receive the same benefits that regular employees of the company received.

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A group of poker dealers in Palm Beach, Florida won a lawsuit in federal court this week filed against the Palm Beach Kennel Club Entertainment Complex for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The workers alleged that managers of the club skimmed money off their tips to pay supervisors working the card room floor. According to the Palm Beach Post, the club failed to prove to the jury that it operated a legal tip pool under the FLSA regulations.

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The Capital, a newspaper serving the Annapolis, Maryland area, recently ran an interesting article explaining how the Annapolis County school board has been violating the Fair Labor Standards Act for 30 years because it averaged pay for school secretaries rather than pay them specific hourly wages. The violation was discovered last year when school officials installed a new payroll system.

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A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a $35.6 million judgment against Family Dollar Stores Inc. originally handed down by a Tuscaloosa, Ala., federal jury in 2006. The jury said the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by wrongly classifying employees as store managers in order to deny them overtime pay.

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Three federal judges this week upheld a $35.6 million ruling against Family Dollar Stores Inc., saying the chain denied employees overtime pay by classifying them as store managers.

A three-judge panel in Tuscaloosa agreed with a 2006 jury that found the Matthews, N.C.-based company in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and awarded back pay to 1,424 employees, who routinely worked 60 to 70 hours a week. Their duties often included mopping floors, unloading trucks, stocking shelves and running cash registers.

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