FORT MYERS, FL – Federal laws exist to ensure employees get all their legally earned wages and when a Fort Myers security group’s pay practices shortchanged the overtime wages of 29 workers, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division helped to recover $107,936 in back wages and liquidated damages owed.
Division investigators found AIM Security Group LLC paid some employees straight-time when they worked over 40 hours in a workweek instead of overtime pay, a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. They also determined the employer paid $1 or more per hour – in addition to the employees’ regular rates – and labeled it as commissions on payroll records, an FLSA recordkeeping violation.
“In most cases, workers are owed overtime wages at a rate of time and one-half their rate of pay for hours over 40 in a workweek in the U.S.,” explained Wage and Hour Division District Director Nicolas Ratmiroff in Tampa, Florida. “While there are exceptions, none of them applied in this case. AIM Security Group’s pay practices violated federal law and, as importantly, denied full wages to 29 of its workers.”
AIM Security Group LLC is a private security guard and patrol service business that provides services for facilities such as shopping centers and construction sites in Fort Myers.
In fiscal year 2021, the Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $6 million for more than 5,300 workers in the guard services industry.
For more information about the FLSA and other laws enforced by the division, contact the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). Calls can be answered confidentially in more than 200 languages. Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a fact sheet that covers how the FLSA applies to security guard and maintenance service industries.
