Bayville Landscaping Company Underpaid Mexican Workers: Feds

BERKELEY, NJ — A U.S. Department of Labor investigation revealed that a Bayville landscaping company was underpaying Mexican workers and violating the H-2B visa worker program, the Department of Labor announced in a news release.

Turf Masters Inc. hired workers from Mexico to cut grass under the H-2B temporary non-agricultural workers visa program, then paid the workers "sub-prevailing wage rates" as they worked more than 50 hours a week and tried to hide this from the Department of Labor, the news release said.

An investigation by the Department of Labor's Wage and Hours division found that Turf Masters violated the visa program in the following ways:

• Paid temporary workers about $11 an hour instead of the required prevailing wage rate of $15.52 per hour and $23.28 for overtime
• Did not reimburse workers for inbound and outbound travel expenses
• Did not retain records and H-2B documents for three years

The investigation also found that Turf Masters instructed workers to say they did not work overtime hours when they did, according to the release.

An administrative law judge ordered that Turf Masters pay $181,670.19 in back wages to 47 temporary workers. The landscaping company also has to pay $38,329.81 in civil money penalties.

Turf Masters also agreed to undergo extensive compliance measures for the next four years, including the "institution of an electronic timekeeping system; hiring of a bilingual monitor to conduct trainings, audits and confidential interviews of all the company’s H-2B workers every year and installation of GPS devices on each vehicle used to transport workers," according to the news release.

“Employees have a right to be paid their wages, to seek those wages and cooperate with investigators. The Wage and Hour Division will not tolerate interference with its investigations,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Charlene Rachor in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. “This investigation underscores the department’s commitment to using all enforcement tools to protect the rights of people who work in the U.S. Other employers should use the outcome of this investigation as an opportunity to review their own practices to make sure they comply with the law and avoid violations like those found in this case.”