The owner of retail sod farms in Lawton and three other locations in Oklahoma agreed to pay $72,000 in back wages and liquidated damages for 20 workers who did not receive overtime pay as required by law.
Robert K. Cook III agreed to pay $56,302 in back wages for unpaid overtime compensation plus $15,698 in liquidated damages that are due under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The settlement covered a period of nearly five years: from Dec. 13, 2019, to the Oct. 8, 2024, date of the judgment.
The U.S. Department of Labor obtained the consent judgment and an injunction in Oklahoma’s Northern District federal court in Tulsa.
Cook is the owner/operator of Rob’s Sod Inc. and Cook’s Farmland Enterprises LLC, operating as Green Acre Sod Farm, Green Acre Sod & Landscape Center, and Enterprise Sod and Landscape Center.
“Employers must be familiar with federal regulations that apply to their business and make certain that workers are paid as the FLSA requires,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Michael Speer in Oklahoma City said in a news release.
Cook make improper deductions and misapplied a tax exemption, the DOL alleged.
Speer told The Oklahoman that in this case, the employer hired agricultural laborers who worked the fields, tending to the sod, and retail employees working at a store on the farm. The investigation found Cook applied the same tax exemption to both the field and retail workers.
After employees step into the store and most of their labor focuses on the selling of products, the tax exemption no longer applies, Speer said.
In addition to paying the $72,000 in back wages and liquidated damages, Cook was ordered to pay all of his employees no less than $7.25 per hour, the minimum wage established in Oklahoma 15 years ago, in 2009.
Also, any nonexempt employee who works for more than 40 hours a week must be paid “at rates not less than one-and-one-half times the regular hourly rates…” Cook also must “make, keep, and preserve adequate and accurate records” of his employees and their wages, hours, “and other conditions and practices of employment.”
Cook shall not “in any way discriminate, retaliate, or take any adverse employment action, or threaten or imply that adverse action will be taken, against any employee who exercises or asserts his/her” legal rights under the FLSA. Similarly, Cook and his companies “shall not threaten or imply that adverse action will be taken against any employee because of their receipt of funds to be paid under this judgment.”
Green Acre Sod Farm operates on 10,000 acres in Bixby and Haskell, Oklahoma; 6,000 acres on the Red River in Texas; and 2,000 acres in Mount Vernon, Missouri. Green Acre also has 10 retail stores that sell sod and landscaping materials in Lawton, Stillwater, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Owasso, Broken Arrow, Claremore, Bartlesville, Grove, and Joplin, Missouri.
“Though we disagree with the DOL, we are happy to resolve this issue and put it behind us,” Robert B. Sartin, an attorney who represented Cook and his companies in the case, told The Oklahoman.