LinkedIn pays $6 mn over US wage violations

AFP

LinkedIn has paid nearly $6mn in back wages and damages to 359 current and former employees after a US investigation found it had failed to compensate them appropriately for overtime work.

Under a settlement announced by the Labor Department on Monday, the career-focused social network said it paid more than $3.3mn in overtime back wages and $2.5mn in damages to workers in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York.

"This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully co-operating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers whole," said David Weil, administrator of the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division.

"We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps toward securing future compliance."

Labor Department investigators found that LinkedIn violated the overtime and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act by neglecting to record, account and pay for all hours worked in a workweek.

Under the law, covered, nonexempt employees must be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for all hours worked, plus time and a half their regular hourly rates for any work beyond 40 hours in a week.

LinkedIn attributed the violations to "not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly," adding that it had begun to remedy the problem before the Labor Department investigation.