Two Montgomery locations of Checkers are being required to pay almost $27,000 in back wages and damages after the U.S. Department of Labor says the restaurants allowed managers to deduct time from workers’ paychecks illegally.

The department said the actions affected 36 employees of Checkerboard Montgomery and Checkerboard Montgomery.

According to the department, managers violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by:

• Clocking out employees even while they continued working.
• Deducting break time from workers’ schedules regardless of whether they took breaks.
• Deleting entire portions of shifts from pay records.
• Altering timecards to reduce workers’ hours and not paying them required overtime.

In addition to back wages and damages, the department’s Wage and Hour Division assessed the employer $3,636 in civil penalties for repeated violations.

In addition, investigators learned that Checkerboard Montgomery and Checkerboard Montgomery 2 employed six 15-year-old employees to work for more than three hours a day and more than 18 hours per week when school was in session. The teens also worked more than eight hours a day when school was not in session, past 9 p.m. between June 1 and Labor Day, and past 7 p.m. during the rest of the year. These practices violated federal child labor laws.

The division assessed the employer $5,228 in civil penalties.

“When employers act in bad faith and permit managers to alter time records to reduce labor costs, the Department of Labor will act to protect workers and other law-abiding employers,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Kenneth Stripling said. “Willful and illegal actions such as these cannot be ignored as they deprive workers of their rights and make it more difficult for employers who follow the law to be successful.”