A senior living community serving more than 900 residents will pay almost $7,000 in back wages after denying a salaried worker overtime wages, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division announced Thursday.
The department said that McClellan Senior Living of Anniston, AL, incorrectly assumed that an activities director, who was paid on a salary basis, was not entitled to overtime pay. As a result, the employer did not pay overtime due when the employee worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Investigators also determined that the employer asked the activities director to alter pay record hours to substitute hours worked for early dismissal, which is a recordkeeping violation.
McClellan was ordered to pay $6,619.50 in overtime back wages to the employee, a DOL spokesman told McKnight’s Senior Living. The agency also noted that McClellan had misapplied the 541.1 executive exemption meant for supervisors/managers.
According to the Wage and Hour Division, which determines a salaried employee’s exemption status, there are key differences between exempt and nonexempt employees. Those include salary level and job duties.
“Employers who fail to pay workers their rightful wages make it more difficult for their workers to provide for themselves and their families,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Kenneth Stripling, located in Birmingham, AL, said in a statement. “Employers have been reminded that the U.S. Department of Labor will hold them accountable for failures to comply with federal laws which can have costly consequences.”
McClellan Senior Living did not respond to a request for comment before the production deadline.
