Thaindian News

BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA (BNO NEWS) – Charles Evleth Construction, Inc. will be back paying more than 200 workers after losing a lawsuit, prosecutors said Monday.

Charles Evleth Construction, Inc., a Bakersfield-based drywall company, “routinely denied” fair wages and overtime pay to more than 200 construction workers.

Juan Manuel Avalos of Bakersfield worked for Charles Evleth Construction for five months in 2005. Avalos was hired with a verbal agreement to work five days a week for $750 per week in pay. However, when Avalos started, he was required to work six days a week and often worked 12-hour shifts without overtime pay. Avalos was paid in cash every week, but discovered two months into the job that a site supervisor had been cashing his paychecks and taking up to $500 every week from his pay, leaving Avalos what remained in cash.

Avalos is only one of the hundreds of individuals that were unfairly victimized by the construction company.

“To boost its profits and underbid competitors, Charles Evleth Construction routinely denied its hardworking employees a fair wage and overtime pay,” Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. said. “(Monday)’s judgment secures back pay for more than 200 employees and prohibits this company from violating workers’ rights.”

Brown filed a lawsuit in January 2009 in Kern County Superior Court against Charles Evleth Construction, after his office initiated its investigation in late 2008, finding nearly 1,200 violations of California law. The investigation also found failed unemployment insurance payments, failed state disability fund payments and failed state and federal taxes payments.

In addition, the settlement prohibits Charles Evleth Construction from denying fair wages and overtime pay for workers, paying employees in cash to avoid state and federal taxes, and permitting supervisors to take kickbacks from their employees’ paychecks.