The US Department of Labour says it has recovered US$1.5m in back wages and damages for 668 garment industry workers in Southern California that were paid below the minimum wage.
The DoL’s Wage and Hour Division carried out an investigation in which it found employers paid below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. WHD also determined that employers it investigated often failed to pay employees overtime at time-and-one-half of their regular rates of pay when they worked more than 40 hours in a week, as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Go deeper with GlobalData
The WHD says it is working with retailers to encourage them to buy only from suppliers that comply with federal labour laws, and to examine the role that garment pricing plays in a manufacturer’s ability to pay workers legally required minimum wages.
Of the 2018 investigation in Los Angeles, Valle Fashion, Dawa Fashion, KIT and Casa Q were all named as having flouted the minimum wage law with some also failing to maintain adequate time records.
“We still find high rates of noncompliance even after years of strong education and outreach efforts balanced with targeted enforcement in the garment industry,” said Wage and Hour Division regional administrator Ruben Rosalez, in San Francisco.
“These employees are regularly denied minimum wage and overtime for the long, hard hours they put in on the job. All those in the industry need to recognise that if the price they pay for production done in the US is too low, it can cause egregious minimum wage and overtime violations, unfairly undercutting their competition.”
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalData
