Eagle drywall company cheated workers of $100K, government says. Here’s what happened
An Eagle drywall company in business for 33 years cheated workers out of more than $100,000 in overtime wages, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division concluded after an investigation.
Intermountain Drywall and Acoustical Inc. intentionally underpaid its 59 workers by denying them overtime wages, the Wage and Hour Division said.
“Every day in construction we see a lot of overtime violations, Carrie Aguilar, Wage and Hour district director in Portland, said by phone. “This is not an atypical case, but the back wages were large.”
Intermountain Drywall paid its workers regular hourly wages even for overtime hours over 40 hours per week, Aguilar said. Company executives repeatedly lied to investigators, telling them the company paid them time and a half, as required by law, the agency said.
The violations took place between Aug. 12, 2017, and Aug. 11, 2020. The workers averaged 51 hours per week, meaning they should have been paid time and a half for 11 of those hours. Some workers put in 70 hours a week, Aguilar said.
The agency ordered Intermountain Drywall to pay its employees $110,526, plus an equal amount in damages. The company was also fined $22,560 because of the “reckless nature” of the violations, the agency said.
The back pay, along with the fine, has been paid, Aguilar said.
“Shortchanging employees who work long, hard hours to provide shelter and safety to so many is unfair and illegal. Then, Intermountain Drywall and Acoustical lied to federal investigators. It’s hard to understand how they thought that would end well,” Aguilar wrote in a press release.
Gary Douthit, the company’s owner, did not return a call for comment.
Intermountain Drywall registered with the Idaho secretary of state’s office in 1989. The company began in Boise and moved to Eagle in 2000, online records show.
Better Business Bureau gives the company an A+ rating. Its files do not show any customer complaints brought against Intermountain Drywall.
In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, Wage and Hour investigated 3,034 cases in the construction industry and ordered companies to pay 3,034 workers $36.1 million in back wages. It was the sector with the largest wage orders, ahead of food services, where restaurants and other companies were ordered to pay $34.7 million to 4,237 workers.
Altogether, the agency recovered more than $230 million for more than 190,000 workers for the year.
This story was originally published January 25, 2022 at 2:58 PM.
