Malvern Company Put Out Newsletters On Workplace Issues

MALVERN, PA - The same Malvern company that must pay $1.75 million in back wages and damages for not allowing employees to take paid bathroom or water breaks puts out a number of publications involving legal and workplace issues.

Progressive Business Publications (PBP), a marketing and publishing firm located on 370 Technology Drive in the Great Valley Corporate Center, produces newsletters entitled “Supervisor’s Legal Update” and “Facility Manager’s Alert” among others.

The newsletters also purport to address issues in the workplace, like the “Communication Bulletin” and “Administrative Professional Update.”

Telemarketing workers at PBP had their pay docked for nearly every single second they didn’t spend making sales calls, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Now, owner Ed Satell and the company owe employees a payday of $1.75 million in back wages and damages for a direct violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal judge ruled.

The Department of Labor said this case stood out for the “egregious nature” of the violations, according to a Daily Local News report.

Employees with PBP’s Malvern office said that Satell used company-wide meetings a platform to rail against increasing the minimum wage.

Satell argued that employees were allowed to take breaks whenever they wanted to as part of a “flexible arrangement,” but that they were not paid for those breaks. He said the company plans to appeal the Department of Labor’s decision.

“We simply felt the rule did not apply in these flexible work kinds of situations,” Satell said.

Because many of the affected employees were already working at minimum wage, the pay they were docked put them below minimum wage earnings, according to the Department of Labor.

To read more, please see Patch’s original story on the case.