Garden State gas owner gets hit for violating labor laws

LAWRENCE » Gas attendants used to the smell of fuel will get a whiff of rightly earned greenbacks.

The owner of six Garden State gas stations agreed to pay back wages to two dozen employees to resolve employment violations.

Manit Guleria, the owner of the halfdozen gas stations, will shell out more than $1.4 million in back pay and damages to 24 gas attendants after admitting he didn’t follow the Fair Labor Standards Act, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division announced.

Guleria required employees to work more than 10 hours a day for seven days a week, paying flat salaries that resulted in hourly wages below the federal minimum wage of $7.25. He also snubbed workers out of overtime and covered tracks by not maintaining payroll records, authorities said.

The FLSA requires employees to be paid minimum wage for up to 40 hours and time and a half for anything beyond that.

The workers were employed at Citgos in Maple Shade, Pennington, Mount Holly, Cherry Hill and Moorestown and a Lukoil in Merchantville.

The settlement calls for the two dozen snubbed workers to get $735,512 in wages and another $735,512 in overtime pay and damages. Guleria must also swallow a $8,976 penalty for the violations.

As part of mandated changes, Guleria must have an electronic timekeeping system at the gas stations to track workers’ hours and will alter break policies to comply with federal standards.

“This settlement puts these wages into the hands of the employees who earned them,” Charlene Rachor, director of the Division’s Southern Jersey District Office, said in a statement.