CVS agrees to pay back wages after investigation

WOONSOCKET – CVS Caremark Corp. has agreed to pay back wages and civil penalties totaling nearly $265,000 after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor found some CVS stores had violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) rules on wages and youth employment, the department said last week.
Previous investigations by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division had found violations at some retail pharmacies, said Corlis Sellers, the division’s Northeast regional administrator. The division said it examined 63 CVS stores, finding wage violations or youth-employment violations at 43. Those violations reportedly included the exposure of 78 minors to the hazards of loading, unloading or operating cardboard balers/compactors at various locations; the employment of seven minors in violation of FLSA time standards; and the underpayment of 51 employees, mostly because of improper editing of their time cards by store managers.
CVS has agreed to pay civil penalties totaling $226,595 – $215,378 for youth violations and $11,220 for wage violations – as well as paying back wages totaling $38,151 to 51 employees, the Labor Department said. The company also has agreed to make efforts to achieve full FLSA compliance at its more than 6,000 retail stores nationwide.
In a statement, the company said that “although CVS/pharmacy disputes the findings of the investigations concerning payment of wages, the decision was made to pay 51 employees back wages that in most instances ranged from $39 to $300.”