In the wake of a government audit, Denver-based Apartment Investment and Management Co. has paid $730,043 in back wages to 319 of its current and former employees.
The company’s compensation practices violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, investigators with the U.S. Department of Labor’s wage and hour division found. The division launched a national investigation after examining records from five Colorado properties of AIMCO, the nation’s second-largest owner of apartments.
Once it realized its mistake, AIMCO acted “swiftly and honorably in a way I have rarely seen in my 30 years of looking into these matters,” said Richard Habura, district director of the wage and hour division. “I wish every company we ran across would understand and accept their responsibility in a similarly outstanding manner.”
Instead of paying overtime wages, some AIMCO managers inappropriately allowed employees to bank comp time that could be used at a later date, Habura said. Workers covered under the act should be paid at least minimum wage for all hours worked. They also should be paid 1.5 times their regular hourly pay rate for every hour over 40 worked in a single workweek. To avoid paying overtime, employers may adjust workers’ schedules to ensure they don’t work more than 40 hours in one workweek, Habura said.
Only government entities may allow workers to accumulate comp time in lieu of overtime – and even those workers should be given 1.5 hours off for every hour over 40 they worked in a week, Habura said.
Companies across the nation violate the law in a fashion similar to AIMCO “every single day mainly because they have received bad advice from an attorney or accountant,” Habura said. In fiscal 2004, the division recovered nearly $200 million in back wages for more than 288,000 workers.
AIMCO took several steps to rectify the problem, said Judy Stowell, the company’s director of public and government relations.
The company conducted a self-audit under the department’s supervision, sending 18,000 surveys to current and former employees “to make sure we had reached everyone who might have had an issue,” she said. The company also produced a video to explain to employees how they’re covered under the act.
Staff writer Christine Tatum can be reached at 303-820-1015 or ctatum@denverpost.com.
Other pay cases
The Fair Labor Standards Act, which became effective Aug. 23, allows employees to recoup unpaid overtime wages. Cases the the U.S. Department of Labor has made public since the act took effect:
May 4: Exelon Corp. employees filed a class-action lawsuit alleging they were not properly paid when called in to work during time off. Employees are seeking compensation in seven figures.
March 24: Stillwater Mining, the only U.S. palladium and platinum producer, paid workers nearly $600,000 in back overtime wages.
Feb. 3: At University of Phoenix, nearly $5 million went to 4,300 enrollment advisers who accrued unpaid overtime to recruit students for the country’s largest private university.
Jan. 17: Cingular Wireless paid $1.5 million to Springfield, Ill., call-center workers who went unpaid for starting their shifts early and working late.
Dec. 1: Scott Penn Inc., a Canton, Miss., logging company, agreed to pay 27 employees $34,180 in overtime back pay.
DENVER POST RESEARCHERS MONNIE NILSSON AND JOHN WENZEL
