A federal investigation has recovered more than $3.8 million in back wages for 1,100 employees of a oilfield pipeline inspection company operating in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and 38 other states, officials said Wednesday.
The US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found that FIS Holdings LLC of Sand Springs, Okla., had paid workers a fixed amount per day, regardless of how man hours they worked, violating overtime requirements of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a statement from the department.
The company, a major supplier of oil and gas pipeline inspection services across North America that operates under the name Frontier Integrity Solutions Operations LLC, required employees to work 50 to 60 hours in a typical week but failed to track workers’ overtime hours, which also violated record-keeping laws, according to the statement.
“These pipeline inspectors work hard to protect our communities, and now it’s our turn to protect them,” Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, said in the statement . “They deserve to be paid every cent of their hard-earned wages.”
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him @jeremycfox.