Your call will be answered in the order received by people who aren’t getting paid for all the work they do.

Based in Nashville, Tenn., Sitel Operating Corp. provides customer-service outsourcing services via telephone call center services. After a U.S. Labor Department investigation, the company agreed to pay 486 employees $68,901 in back wages  for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime and record-keeping provisions. Sitel also paid civil penalties of $74,900, because it repeatedly violated the FLSA, officials at the Labor Department said.

Employees working on the United Services Automobile Association account, according to the investigation, were not paid for the time they spent doing required preparatory work before their shifts started. That amounted to 28 to 39 minutes per week logging into Web applications before they could even access the time clock to start their shift.

“Employers must pay workers for all time spent conducting work activities, which includes any work done before or after a shift officially begins or ends,” said the district director of the Wage and Hour Division in Nashville. “This case should be a wake-up call to other employers to review their employment practices and ensure that their employees are being compensated for all work activities they perform.”

Read the whole story on Oak Ridge Today.com.