The US Department of Labor is suing a Gloucester, Mass., seafood processing, packing and distribution business; a Lowell, Mass.-based temporary employment agency and payroll service that supplies temporary workers exclusively to the business, and their respective owners, for allegedly underpaying 55 low-wage workers, falsifying records and taking improper payroll deductions from some of the employees.

An investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division found Intershell International Corp. and its owners, Yibing Gao-Rome and Monte Rome, and Ultimate Advance Corp. and its owner Phalla Chhit, who jointly employed the workers, violated the overtime and recordkeeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The department is asking the court to find the Intershell defendants are liable for payment of the back wages and liquidated damages of at least $272,000; of that total amount, the Ultimate defendants are jointly liable for approximately $116,000. The department also seeks an order permanently enjoining and restraining all the defendants from future Fair Labor Standards Act violations.

In its lawsuit, the department alleges that Intershell and its owners, since February 2013, and Ultimate and its owner, since April 2015:

• Did not pay time and one-half their regular rate of pay to 55 employees who cut, cleaned and packed seafood when they worked more than 40 hours during a work week, including employees paid at an hourly rate and those paid on a piece rate basis.
• Failed to maintain adequate and accurate records of all employees’ hours of work.
• Provided inaccurate payroll records to the division’s investigators.
• Improperly deducted from certain employees’ pay the cost of cleaning their uniforms.

 “This case shows a ‘fissured workplace’ – one where the employment relationship between the workers and the business receiving the benefit of their labor has fractured because a company contracts out various activities to staffing agencies, often to avoid liabilities and to cut costs,” said Michael Felsen, the department’s New England regional solicitor. “In such arrangements, workers are frequently deprived unlawfully of the full wages to which they’re entitled. In this case both the company using the contract labor, and the staffing agency that provides the workers, are responsible as employers to comply with the law and subject to enforcement action if they don’t.”

The division’s Boston District Office investigated the case. Senior Trial Attorney James Glickman and Trial Attorney Sheila Gholkar in Boston’s solicitor’s office filed the complaint.