BOSTON — A Boston wholesale company providing baked goods to a variety of retail stores and supermarket chains, along with its President and Treasurer, and five temporary staffing agencies that provided workers to the company, have been issued 30 citations totaling more than $440,000 in restitution and penalties for failing to comply with a variety of state wage and hour laws, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced.
Dutch Maid Bakery, Inc. and Dutch Maid Bakery Massachusetts Business Trust, and its President, Gary Blanken, and Treasurer, Joseph Pearson Jr., along with the staffing agency Hub Personnel Services, Inc., and its President and Treasurer Hoang Walter Nguyen, of Dorchester, were issued 11 citations in total. The citations were for wage and hour violations, including: failure to pay minimum wage and overtime wages, failure to furnish true and accurate payroll records, failure to keep true and accurate payroll records, failure to furnish suitable pay stubs, failure to provide workers written notice of earned sick time leave and failure to provide adequate notice of the Temporary Worker Right to Know Law to workers.
“Workers deserve to be paid their rightful wage – and when they aren’t, our office will hold their employer accountable,” AG Campbell said. “As we push for greater economic stability for our residents, tackling the issue of wage theft will remain a priority for this office.”
Additional staffing agencies that provided workers to Dutch Maid Bakery included Dorchester Temp Service Corp., General Employment Service, Inc., Amado Enterprises, Inc. and Amado Staffing d/b/a Amado Enterprises, and AR Services, Inc., all from Dorchester. These companies were issued a total of 19 citations. The citations included violations of the following laws: minimum wage and overtime, record keeping, earned sick time, Temporary Worker Right to Know Law, misclassification of employees as independent contractors and failure to make timely payment of wages.
The AG’s Fair Labor Division’s proactive investigation into the employment practices of Dutch Maid Bakery found that the company did not maintain true and accurate records of its employees. Dutch Maid Bakery also failed to include hours worked for salaried employees on paystubs and did not have an earned sick time leave policy or provide individual notice to employees.
The AG’s Office also determined that Hub Personnel Services failed to maintain accurate daily or weekly timekeeping records and invoices of temporary workers’ owed wages. In addition, existing payroll records were incomplete and inaccurate. Hub Personnel Services also failed to provide earned sick time to employees and failed to provide job orders for employees and inadequate job descriptions on those which were provided. Hub Personnel Services and Dutch Maid Bakery were found jointly responsible for failing to properly compensate workers per the minimum wage and overtime state statutes.
Under the investigation, the AG’s Office found that dozens of workers are owed restitution.
In her inaugural address last week, AG Campbell announced her commitment to building economic prosperity for Massachusetts residents by combatting wage theft.
In Massachusetts, temporary workers who work for staffing agencies are protected by the same laws as other workers. There are also specific, additional protections set out in the Temporary Workers Right to Know Law. Any workers who believe their rights have been violated in their workplace are encouraged to file a complaint with the AG’s Office at www.mass.gov/ago/fld. For information about the state’s wage and hour laws, workers may call the AG’s Fair Labor Hotline at (617) 727-3465 or go to the Workplace Rights website for materials in multiple languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Khmer, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Russian, Lao and Italian.
This matter was handled by Assistant Attorneys General Karina Valencia and Lillian Hirales, and Investigator Huong Phan, all from the AG’s Fair Labor Division.
