DEDEDO, Guam\u2014The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $17,164 in back wages from a federal subcontractor who denied full wages and benefits to eight workers providing pest control services at\u00a0U.S. Air Force and Navy installations in Guam.<\/p>\n
The department\u2019s\u00a0Wage and Hour Division\u00a0found Pacific Pest Control Inc. in Dededo\u00a0violated\u00a0the McNamara-O\u2019Hara\u00a0Service Contract Act\u00a0for failing to pay affected workers the correct wage rates set by federal law for their services. Instead, the employer paid lower hourly rates than those required for pest controllers and failed to fully provide their health benefits as required.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Investigators also found the employer\u00a0violated the overtime pay requirements under the\u00a0Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act\u00a0when they based overtime calculations on the lower, incorrect wage rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot paying workers their full wages makes it harder for them to make ends meet,\u201d said Wage and Hour Division district director Terence Trotter in Honolulu. \u201cDoing so also allows employers to improperly reduce labor costs and gain an unfair competitive advantage over businesses that comply with the law.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the period of the investigation, Pacific Pest Control Inc. was working as a subcontractor for Defense Base Services Inc., an Anchorage, Alaska, company.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $48 million in back wages due to over 21,000 employees working on federal contracts. For confidential compliance assistance about the\u00a0Service Contract Act\u00a0and the\u00a0Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, call the agency\u2019s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).\u00a0(PR)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DEDEDO, Guam\u2014The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $17,164 in back wages from a federal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":377957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,8220],"class_list":["post-377971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam","tag-usdol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}