ATLANTA, Ga. — An auto repair shop and its owner who owed a former worker $915 and paid him with tens of thousands of pennies that were coated in automotive fluid and dumped on his driveway, was ordered recently to pay nine ex-employees almost $40,000 in back wages plus damages.
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh filed a complaint Dec. 30, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against a Peachtree City auto repair shop and its owner, alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The U.S. Department of Labor and a federal judge determined that Miles Walker, the owner of 811 Autoworks LLC – operating as A OK Walker Autoworks – retaliated against an employee who contacted the agency after he resigned, and the employer failed to pay his final wages.
The ex-employee, Andreas Flaten, called the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division on January 26, 2021, to report that he did not receive his last paycheck. Flaten said he was told that his final paycheck had been prepared “but it never made it to the mail.”
The next day the DOL’s WHD called the company to inquire about Flaten’s last paycheck. “Defendants informed Wage and Hour that they would not pay Mr. Flaten his last paycheck,” the complaint alleged.
However, within hours of learning that Flaten had complained to the DOL about not receiving his last paycheck, Walker decided to pay him – with pennies. “How can you make this guy realize what a disgusting example of a human being he is?” Walker told the WHD. “[Y]ou know what? I’ve got plenty of pennies; I’ll use them.”
On March 12, 2021, Walker paid Flaten’s final wages of $915 by dumping at his home approximately 91,500 pennies covered in motor oil or transmission fluid – blocking and staining his driveway and requiring nearly seven hours for him to remove. An envelope marked with an expletive and containing a pay stub, but no check was placed with the coins.
Also, defamatory statements about Flaten allegedly were posted on the company’s website.
Walker claimed in a court document that “paying an employee in United States currency, no matter the denomination of the currency, cannot be considered a retaliatory or discriminating action.” He said he asked a WHD representative “if he could pay in cash and if any denomination of cash was acceptable,” and was told “it was fine so long as Mr. Flaten was paid.”
The federal agency determined that Walker and 811 Autoworks violated the FLSA’s overtime provisions by paying Flaten and eight other employees at the straight-time rate “regardless of the number of hours worked” each week; that practice had occurred since at least April 5, 2019, the DOL discovered. The company failed to compensate its employees at rates of at least time-and-a-half for all hours worked in excess of 40.
Walker and 811 Autoworks also failed to keep adequate and accurate records of employees’ pay rates and work hours, the DOL charged.
In a consent default judgment dated June 13, Walker and 811 Autoworks agreed to pay the nine former employees $19,967 in back wages plus liquidated damages of an identical amount – a total of $39,934, presumably not in pennies.
The liquidated damages “will be paid in their entirety with no withholding or F.I.C.A. required,” Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. decreed. All of the payments must be made to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Atlanta office, which will forward the funds to the nine ex-employees.
Batten also enjoined Walker and 811 Autoworks from future FLSA retaliation, overtime and recordkeeping violations.
The defendants were ordered to remove all photographs and references to Flaten from the company’s website and barred them from posting anything about him “on this or any other website or social media site.”
The judge ordered Walker to “immediately post” the consent judgment “in all conspicuous places in or about” 811 Autoworks “where notices for employees are customarily posted,” and to keep them there for a full year.
In addition, Walker was ordered to post a DOL WHD fact sheet “in all conspicuous places in or about its facility” and to maintain it there “permanently unless and until the Fact Sheet is amended” by the Labor Department.
Batten also chastised Walker and 811 Autoworks for “repeated … violations and blatant disregard” for the court’s orders.