A Florida cellphone seller owes workers $27,000 in back pay after various violations
An owner of Boost Mobile franchises in Pensacola burned the candle at both ends when it comes to keeping money it should have paid workers, violating minimum wage and overtime laws, according to the Department of Labor.
That’ll cost IV Wireless, which also owns Boost Mobile franchises elsewhere in Florida, $27,514 in back pay and damages to 32 employees.
IV Wireless dipped into employees’ pay “to make up for cash register shortages, inventory deficiencies, and transactional errors,” Wage and Hour Division investigators found. “This practice resulted in minimum wage violations when, because of the deductions, the employees’ hourly wages fell below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.”
“Penalizing employees by withholding a portion of their pay created violations in this case and denied workers wages they had legally earned,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Daniel White.
As far as overtime, investigators found IV Wireless either didn’t pay it or didn’t include commission payments as it should have when calculating overtime. And the company failed to keep good records of hours worked.
According to its State of Florida corporate registration, IV Wireless is run by Nimesh Patel out of Orlando. There are six IV Wireless Pensacolas registered with the state, all officially managed by Patel, Saleem Valiyani in Winter Garden and Kunal Patel in Woodstock, Georgia.
This story was originally published February 19, 2019 at 6:59 AM.
