LinkedIn pays $6 million for unpaid wages

LinkedIn has paid nearly $6 million in back pay and damages for underpaying more than 350 workers, the Labor Department announced on Monday.

The fine comes after investigators found that the Mountain View, Calif., company did not record or pay employees in four states for all of the hours they worked in a week, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

{mosads}“ ‘Off the clock’ hours are all too common for the American worker,” Susana Blanco, head of the department’s wage and hour division for the San Francisco district, said in a statement. “This practice harms workers, denies them the wages they have rightfully earned and takes away time with families.”

About $3.3 million went toward overtime back pay for 359 current and former workers in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York. The company paid another $2.5 million in damages.

In addition to that money, the professional networking site has also agreed to provide new training and policy explanations to staffers and make sure that they know not to put in work when off the clock.  

In a statement, a company spokesperson said that the violation “was a function of not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly; prior to the [Department of Labor] approaching us, we had already begun to remedy this.”

“LinkedIn has made every effort possible to ensure each impacted employee has been made whole,” the spokesperson added.  

Updated at 3:31 p.m. to note that the settlement has already been paid