A federal court has ordered a South Carolina company providing laborers to a turkey processing plant to pay four disabled workers $165,402 in back wages and liquidated damages after the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found the employer violated the minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Work Services Inc. provides employees to work at Kraft Foods Global Inc.’s plant in Newberry...

The court found the company and its owner and supervisor forged the workers’ signatures on paychecks, Social Security checks, and yearly state and federal tax returns, and then kept the funds. The court also found that the company’s owner charged the disabled workers plainly unreasonable rent to live in two connected double-wide mobile homes crowded with as many as 10 people.

In its order, the court found that the defendants did not pay the workers “any of their wages during the relevant time period.”  ...

The company did not appeal, making the court’s decision final.

*Sourced by RepRisk due diligence on ESG and business conduct risks, www.reprisk.com.