LinkedIn Corp has paid nearly US$6 million in back wages and damages to 359 current and former employees after a US investigation found it had failed to compensate them appropriately for overtime work.
Under a settlement announced by the US Department of Labor on Monday, the career-focused social network said it paid more than US$3.3 million in overtime back wages and US$2.5 million in damages to workers in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York.
“This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers whole,” Labor Department Wage and Hour Division Administrator David Weil said. “We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps toward securing future compliance.”
Department investigators found that LinkedIn violated the overtime and record-keeping provisions of the US Fair Labor Standards Act by neglecting to record, account and pay for all hours worked in a workweek.
Under the law, covered, nonexempt employees must be paid at least the US federal minimum wage of US$7.25 per hour for all hours worked, plus time-and-a-half their regular hourly rates for any work beyond 40 hours in a week.
LinkedIn attributed the violations to “not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly,” adding that it had begun to remedy the problem before the Labor Department investigation.
“LinkedIn has made every effort possible to ensure each impacted employee has been made whole,” a spokesman added in a statement.
The company has also agreed to provide compliance training and distribute its policy prohibiting off-the-clock work to all nonexempt employees and their managers, remind managers of the affected employees that overtime work must be recorded and paid for, and reiterate its policy prohibiting retaliation against any employee who raises workplace concerns.
“Off-the-clock hours are all too common for the American worker. This practice harms workers, denies them the wages they have rightfully earned and takes away time with families,” Wage and Hour Division San Francisco District Director Susana Blanco said.
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