A New Jersey drywall contractor owes $725,000 in back wages, damages and civil money penalties under a federal court order, after the U.S. Department of Labor found 48 workers were denied overtime pay. The company is P & B Partitions Inc. of Voorhees. The order was reported on Oct. 22.

What the court order requires

The Labor Department obtained a consent judgment and final order in federal district court, Recruiting Headlines reported. A consent judgment is a court order the company agreed to, so it carries the force of a ruling rather than an allegation.

The sum is a total, and not all of it goes to the workers as wages. According to a second account from Construction Owners, it breaks into $350,000 in back wages, $350,000 in liquidated damages and $25,000 in civil money penalties. That account dates the order June 26, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

The timing is worth noting. The order was entered on June 26, according to Construction Owners, and it reached the public in late October, nearly four months later. Overtime recoveries can surface long after a court acts, and the workers named in them may already have moved on to other jobs.

Because the sum includes penalties, the headline figure overstates what lands in workers’ pockets. The $700,000 in back pay and liquidated damages is the portion that compensates the 48 workers, and the $25,000 in penalties is separate.

What to do if overtime is not being paid

Workers who put in more than 40 hours a week and see no time-and-a-half on the stub should start with their own hours. Write down when each workday began, including time spent waiting at a yard or shop, and compare that record with the hours the employer paid. A gap that falls in overtime weeks is the kind of problem the Labor Department pursued here.

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The free official route is the Wage and Hour Division, which takes overtime and minimum wage complaints. Federal law generally gives workers two years to recover unpaid overtime, and three when the violation is willful, so the oldest pay periods are the ones that expire first.

Waiting for a ride counted as work time

The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division found the company did not pay employees for pre-shift time spent waiting for transportation to jobsites. The department said that violates the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

That is the part of the case that reaches beyond one company. Workers on crews often gather at a yard or shop before a van takes them to the site. Whether that time counts as paid work depends on the facts, and the department’s finding shows it can.

Why damages double the back pay

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a worker who wins unpaid wages can also recover an equal amount as liquidated damages. In this case the two pieces are the same size, $350,000 each, which is why the amount owed is roughly twice the wages the company failed to pay.

The $25,000 in civil money penalties is a separate item. Penalties are a fine tied to the violation, and the reports do not describe where that portion is paid. The back wages and liquidated damages are the portions that compensate workers.

Divided across the 48 workers, the $700,000 in back wages and liquidated damages comes to about $14,583 each. That is an average, and the actual shares depend on each worker’s hours. The figure shows how much overtime can add up to when it goes unpaid over a long stretch.

Employers covered by the federal law are required to keep records of hours worked and wages paid. A worker’s own notes matter because they can be checked against the employer’s time records, and a gap between the two is where most wage disputes start.

A comparable recovery in Indiana

The New Jersey order came the same month as another overtime recovery. Insurance Journal reported on Oct. 28 that the Labor Department recovered $604,000 in back wages for 829 hourly workers at Toa (USA) LLC in Mooresville, Indiana, where an attendance bonus was left out of overtime calculations.

The two cases show different ways overtime goes wrong. At P & B Partitions, hours went uncounted. At Toa, hours were counted but the rate was too low. A stub that looks short can fail either test, so workers should check both the hours and the rate.

None of the accounts names a Labor Department official or a worker, and none says how long the practice went on. The department also has not been quoted on how the 48 workers will be paid.

What is on file is the consent judgment, the sum and the finding that the company owed overtime for waiting time. For workers who have been in similar jobs, that is a reason to keep their own hour records.

Hours worked but not paid at time and a half?

A claim for unpaid overtime has a clock on it, and the weeks that fall outside the two-year window are the ones that can no longer be recovered. A worker who waits to raise a short stub gives up the oldest pay periods first.

A wage claim has no kit of its own, so the written-response job is the honest fit here: 50 Letters to SSA, IRS, Banks & Insurers supplies fill-in letters that each name when to send them, where, the deadline and what to enclose. Its 113 pages also carry state office letters for fair hearings and bank letters for frozen accounts and card disputes.

Get fill-in letters to put an unpaid-overtime question in writing →

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.