Ashley Furniture to reimburse former, current workers with overtime back pay
The owner of Ashley Furniture HomeStores in Lubbock, Texas, recently agreed to pay more than $57,000 worth of back wages to 170 current and former employees of the company's Texas locations, in addition to its store in Hobbs, New Mexico.
The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division uncovered numerous violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, including failure to compensate employees for attending mandatory meetings, illegally deducting wages for business cards, name tags, postage stamps and assorted other materials, improperly exempting some employees from overtime, failure to pay time-and-a-half for some overtime hours and neglecting to keep proper employee time and attendance records.
"Employees were working more than 48 hours a week for straight commission earnings, resulting in their pay falling below the federal minimum wage," said Cynthia Watson, regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division in the Southwest.
Rick Martinez, executive vice president for retail operations at the company, claimed that the errors occurred as a result of a lack of knowledge and were not deliberate, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports.
The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division uncovered numerous violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, including failure to compensate employees for attending mandatory meetings, illegally deducting wages for business cards, name tags, postage stamps and assorted other materials, improperly exempting some employees from overtime, failure to pay time-and-a-half for some overtime hours and neglecting to keep proper employee time and attendance records.
"Employees were working more than 48 hours a week for straight commission earnings, resulting in their pay falling below the federal minimum wage," said Cynthia Watson, regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division in the Southwest.
Rick Martinez, executive vice president for retail operations at the company, claimed that the errors occurred as a result of a lack of knowledge and were not deliberate, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports.
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