LinkedIn has been busted by the Department of Labor for failing to pay hundreds of employees their owed overtime wages. When investigators informed the company of their findings, the omnipresent résumé site and noted spam factory conceded to paying wronged employees nearly $6 million in back wages and damages.

According to the Department of Labor's press release:

LinkedIn Corp. has agreed to pay $3,346,195 in overtime back wages and $2,509,646 in liquidated damages to 359 former and current employees working at company branches in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division found that LinkedIn was in violation of the overtime and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. When notified of the violations, LinkedIn agreed to pay all the overtime back wages due and take proactive steps to prevent repeat violations.

The Department of Labor claims that LinkedIn "failed to record, account and pay for all hours worked in a workweek" by nonexempt employees. Beyond compensating employees for back pay, the company also has to inform managers on its "policy prohibiting off-the-clock work" and reassure employees they will not be retaliated against for "[raising] concerns about workplace issues."

Susana Blanco, a Department of Labor director based in San Francisco, said in statement that forcing employees to work off-the-clock hours is a "practice [that] harms workers, denies them the wages they have rightfully earned and takes away time with families."

In a statement to Valleywag, a spokesperson for LinkedIn tried to cast the labor violation as a product problem:

This was a function of not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly; prior to the DoL approaching us, we had already begun to remedy this. LinkedIn has made every effort possible to ensure each impacted employee has been made whole.

The Department of Labor went on to praise LinkedIn for promptly addressing their labor violations, noting "This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators."

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