Florida company owed workers over $18,000 after overtime pay and child labor violations
A Florida company paid $18,844 in back pay to 14 farm workers after the company failed to properly interpret overtime pay rules, according to the Department of Labor.
Lake Meadow Naturals, based in Ocoee, also made a child labor no-no by having a 15-year-old work outside the hours allowed for a 14- or 15-year-old. But what really cost the company, run by Dale Volkert and controller Lisa Graham, $1,346 per affected worker was its handling of overtime rules.
As Palmetto company Utopia Fresh South erroneously did recently, Lake Meadow claimed an exemption from paying overtime pay to agricultural workers processing or packing food grown by their employer.
Wage and Hour “investigators determined that the employees performed inventory and repackaged items received from other farms, and regularly worked in the facility’s store handling and selling products from other farms,” Labor said.
Also Lake Meadow tried to claim some farm workers were salaried managers exempt from overtime. This claim also failed to withstand investigation. The functions they performed, Labor said, “failed to meet the criteria for the [Fair Labor Standards Act’s] ‘white collar’ exemptions.”
On top of everything else, Lake Meadow, though employing people in the agricultural world dominated by per hour pay, didn’t keep accurate time and payroll records.
This story was originally published March 25, 2019 at 8:02 AM.
