Labor Department: Casa Concrete failed to pay workers overtime

A Selden concrete company has agreed to pay $412,000 to settle federal charges that it failed to pay about 20 current and former employees overtime, the U.S. Labor Department announced Thursday.

Casa Concrete Inc. and its owners, Alice and Manuel Fernandes, are parties to the settlement. Neither the Fernandeses nor the company’s attorney could be reached for comment.

In a settlement a company neither denies nor admits guilt.

Casa Concrete has agreed to pay $206,000 in back wages and an equal amount in damages for violations that occurred from September 2013 to September 2016, the consent decree and the Labor Department say.

The settlement comes after the department sued the company and its executives earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Central Islip. The Labor Department’s Long Island office in Westbury conducted the investigation that led to the court action.

The complaint filed in the case says the company failed to pay overtime in two ways: first by not paying workers for “long hours” spent traveling between work sites and then by not paying them a premium rate when they worked more than 40 hours a week.

When they arrived at Casa Concrete in Selden, the workers typically loaded company trucks with tools and equipment, the complaint says. They then traveled in the trucks, often for more than an hour, to a client’s location.

Casa Concrete employees “regularly” worked more than 45 hours a week, the complaint says. But the company paid employees by check for the first 40 hours, and for the remaining hours paid them in cash at their regular hourly rate or less.

Federal labor laws require employers to pay hourly employees for time spent traveling between job sites. And they are also required to pay hourly employees one and one-half times their regular hourly rate when they work more than 40 hours a week.

“Employees are entitled to receive all the wages they have earned for all the hours that they have worked,” said Irv Miljoner, who heads the Long Island department office.

The employees worked as laborers for the company, whose work on Long Island and in New York City involved such things as pouring foundations, creating steps and curbs and building retaining walls.

Workers who want to know if they are covered by the lawsuit should call the Labor Department’s Westbury office at 516-338-1890.