Lawsuit Claims Elkhart Products Corp. Shaved Employees’ Time Records to Avoid Paying OT

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A former Elkhart Products Corporation employee claims the Little Rock, Arkansas manufacturer underreported workers’ hours and failed to pay proper overtime wages.

According to the case, the plaintiff and similarly situated workers often put in as many as 60 hours per week yet were only paid for 40, depriving them of rightful time-and-a-half overtime wages.

The plaintiff says she worked as a non-exempt employee for Elkhart—which manufactures screw machine products, various copper and aluminum tubular components, and the tube fittings for the plumbing, air conditioning and refrigeration industries—in its rotary department between January and September 2020. At the factory where the plaintiff worked, employees were assigned to one of three separate shifts for which they clocked in and out using an electronic time clock, according to the lawsuit.

Although the plaintiff was assigned to the day shift, which ran between 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM, the woman frequently performed work before or after her shift’s start and end times, sometimes working as many as 60 hours per week, the lawsuit relays. Regardless of the number of hours the plaintiff logged, however, the defendant “consistently adjusted” her hours to reflect only 40 per week, the complaint claims.

The plaintiff suspects that other non-exempt workers occasionally or regularly worked more than 40 hours per week but had their time shaved to reflect no more than 40 weekly hours worked.

According to the case, the defendant was well aware that employees were working off the clock without pay, a practice the plaintiff argues is applied at all the company’s locations.

“Defendant knew or showed reckless disregard for whether its actions violated the [Fair Labor Standards Act],” the lawsuit says, alleging workers are owed unpaid overtime premiums.

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