Sun Valley Firm to Pay Federal Labor Penalties

A Sun Valley manufacturer has agreed to pay $107,000 in back wages and $3,000 in penalties to settle a federal complaint that the company submitted misleading information in order to hire three foreign workers and then underpaid them.

Rolene Otero, director of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division district office in Glendale, said the fines should serve as a warning. “We will not allow employers to have an unfair competitive advantage, particularly when they do so at the expense of domestic workers who could have filled the jobs,” Otero said.

Exotic Granite & Marble Inc. hired an engineer, an accountant and a sales manager from India under the H-1B program, which allows employers to hire foreign professionals when no U.S. workers are available for a specific job. The men were paid salaries of $24,000 to $30,000. Labor Department attorneys argued that they should have earned two to three times that amount.

After more than a year of litigation, the company, which provides granite and marble for large-scale construction jobs, without admitting any wrongdoing agreed to pay $66,000 in back wages to one of the employees and about $33,000 to a second, plus interest. The third employee received no back wages. Exotic Granite also paid $3,000 to the federal government.