Tire business with a location in Lexington to pay back wages to employees

Employees of a Lexington tire service center will receive more than $12,000 in back pay, the U.S. Labor Department announced Tuesday.

The Ziegler Tire and Supply Company, which operates 25 locations in Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania, will pay $129,612 to 154 employees in those three states because of overtime and recordkeeping violations, the labor department said.

An investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division found that the company would call mechanics and tire technicians back in to work after regular business hours to do auto service repairs without recording those hours worked.

“The employer failed to add these ‘call-out’ hours to the total hours these employees worked, and failed to include commissions and call-out bonuses in workers’ regular rates of pay when determining overtime rates,” the labor department said in a news release. “These failures led to systemic overtime violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Ziegler’s failure to record all the hours employees worked resulted in recordkeeping violations.”

Employees at the Lexington location on Nandino Boulevard were owed $12,896. Workers at a Ziegler location in Independence were owed $3,090.

“Employers who fail to pay their workers all their hard-earned wages shortchange these people and their families and gain an unfair advantage over competitors who abide by the law,” Wage and Hour District Director John DuMont, who is based in Pittsburgh, said in the release. “The Wage and Hour Division provides many tools and resources to help employers avoid violations and fully comply with the law.”

Ziegler is based in Massillon, Ohio, and is one of northeast Ohio’s largest wholesalers, according to the release. The company’s website says it sells tires for passenger and commercial vehicles and provides auto repair services.