WASHINGTON: LinkedIn has paid nearly $6m 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 Labour Department on Monday, the career-focused social network said it paid more than $3.3m in overtime back wages and $2.5m 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,” said David Weil, administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. “We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps toward securing future compliance.”
The department found LinkedIn violated the overtime and record-keeping provisions of the 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 federal minimum wage of $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.
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.
AFP
