Feds target wages at N.J. gas stations

Motorists line up for gas in Woodbridge, Middlesex County. The U.S. Labor Department is looking at selected gas stations on questions of overtime pay and the minimum wage.
Motorists line up for gas in Woodbridge, Middlesex County. The U.S. Labor Department is looking at selected gas stations on questions of overtime pay and the minimum wage.
By Harold Brubaker, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: April 23, 2011

From 2007 to 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor recovered $1.2 million in back wages for 381 employees at 100 New Jersey gasoline stations.

The department's Wage and Hour Division is now aiming for more.

It launched a statewide enforcement initiative involving investigations at selected gas stations and an effort to educate operators about their obligations to pay minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the agency said Thursday. The act requires work over 40 hours in a week to be paid at a time-and-a-half rate.

"We have found that New Jersey gas stations are rife with violative pay practices such as paying workers a flat salary or 'straight time' wages for all hours, without regard to minimum wage and overtime requirements, or paying workers 'off the books,' rather than maintaining legally required payroll records," George Ference, regional administrator of the Wage and Hour Division in the Northeast, said in a news release disclosing the effort.

Sal Risalvato, executive director of the New Jersey Gasoline-C-Store-Automotive Association, in Springfield, said Friday that his group was aware that since December, Labor Department officials had been looking into the way some gas stations were paying workers.

Some station owners are paying attendants a salary instead of an hourly wage, according to Risalvato. "The Department of Labor is saying that's not OK," he said.

New Jersey is one of two states that prohibit motorists from pumping their own gas. The other is Oregon, according to Leni Fortson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Labor Department in Philadelphia. In such states, more workers are needed to staff stations, further pressuring a business that suffers low profit margins even in states where drivers pump their own gas.

In Pennsylvania, Fortson said, the Wage and Hour Division this year started a similar effort to enforce minimum-wage and overtime laws in the economy-motel industry.

In the last 10 years, agency investigations have resulted in payment of $630,000 in back wages and civil money penalties by motel operators in the state, she said.

Contact staff writer Harold Brubaker at 215-854-4651 or hbrubaker@phillynews.com.

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