Washington — United Solutions Corp. employees at plants in Sardis, Miss. and Leominster, Mass., will receive a total of $1,433,618 in back wages and damages as part of a consent agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor.
An investigation by the department's Wage and Hour Division found the Leominster-based blow and injection molder and ASI Staffing Group Corp., which supplied contract labor to the company, underpaid employees at both plants by denying them overtime pay.
The contract employees worked as machine operators, maintenance workers, molding technicians, color mixers and quality control workers, often in excess of 48 hours per week. Between November 2011 and October 2014, according to the government investigation, ASI Group created additional, fake company names. When employees worked more than 40 hours in a week, the overtime hours were recorded under a separate company name, and some or all of their overtime hours were paid at straight-time rates.
The 566 employees must be paid by December 2016, according to the Labor Department. The companies also must pay $100,000 in fines to the Labor Department and hire consultants to create pay and recordkeeping systems to help ensure compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act and make quarterly compliance reports to the federal government.
No violations were identified at the housewares manufacturer's Gilbert, Ariz., location. The company was formerly known as United Plastics Corp.