WEST COVINA, CALIF. — A federal court is requiring operators of La Puente, Calif., poultry processing facilities to pay $1.2 million in back wages, according to the US Department of Labor (DOL). Through an investigation conducted by the DOL, the agency found the employers to have “deliberately denied overtime wages earned by 113 workers.”

The agency’s litigation against TL Foods Inc., Express Poultry Services Inc., KP Poultry Inc. and their owners, Lily ‘Mei’ Tseng, Jimmy Huynh, Aiwa Tang-Ton and Kevin Truong, dates back to 2021.

The DOL’s investigation found that the processors violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay employees hired to cut, debone and pack chicken overtime wages when they worked up to 70 hours a week. The lawsuit also alleged that the employers retaliated against workers who attempted to enforce their rights under the law.

Allegedly, the employers told some of their workers to forge timesheets, threatening them if they cooperated with federal investigators. The processors created shell companies in an attempt to hide overtime violations over a five-year period from 2015 to 2020, the DOL said.

“Poultry processing workers often spend long hours doing physically demanding work that helps to feed our communities and yet they are among the most vulnerable to exploitation and retaliation,” said Daniel Pasquil, wage and hour division district director for West Covina, Calif. “The wage and hour division has always focused on helping vulnerable workers, and this case sends a signal to industry employers that we will not tolerate their failure to respect the dignity of workers and meet their legal responsibilities.”

The court ordered Tseng and TL Foods to pay more than $1 million in back wages and damages and Huynh and Express Poultry Services to pay $210,438 in back wages and damages to the affected workers. Joint employers Tang-Ton and Truong and their company KP Poultry entered into consent judgments with the department previously. They agreed to pay $531,518 in back wages, liquidated damages and interest to affected workers, and $20,000 in civil money penalties.