Tuesday, November 9, 2004

Homestore Pays $1.2M in Back Wages

Westlake Village-based Homestore (www.homestore.com) reported this week in its quarterly earnings that it had to pay $1.2M in back wages to its employees. The U.S. Department of Labor had alleged that Homestore had misclassified its workers as exempt from overtime, and had paid the employees straight time for overtime hours. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the 435 employees involved sold advertising displayed on Homestore's Realter.com, Homebuilder.com, and RentNet.com web sites. The employees performed inside sales work, primarily telemarketing, which is not exempt from overtime pay. The Department of Labor said that Homestore agreed to re-classify the employees and extend back wage to employees between April 12 of 2002 and October 10 of this year.