A federal court ordered a South Carolina staffing firm to pay $165,402 in back wages and liquidated damages to four disabled workers it provided to a turkey processing plant, the US Department of Labor reported.

Work Services Inc. provides employees to work at Kraft Foods Global Inc.’s plant in Newberry, SC. Investigators from the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found Work Services and its owner Joseph Byrd and supervisor David Perez failed to pay certain intellectually and developmentally disabled employees at least the federal minimum wage and overtime for the work they performed for decades, violating the minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The court found the company and its owner and supervisor forged the workers’ signatures on paychecks, Social Security checks, and yearly state and federal tax returns, and then kept the funds. The court also found that the company’s owner charged the disabled workers unreasonable rent to live in two connected double-wide mobile homes crowded with as many as 10 people.

In its order, the court found that the defendants did not pay the workers “any of their wages during the relevant time period.” 

“The mistreatment of these workers was appalling,” said Southeast Regional Solicitor Stanley Keen. “The fact that this employer was able to obtain an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace makes the whole situation worse.”

The company did not appeal, making the court’s decision final.