CHICAGO, Ill. — Several subcontractors working with electric car maker Rivian are being required to pay more than $300,000 dollars more in back wages and penalties in updated settlements announced today.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul says Rivian subcontractors’ BIW Automotive Solution, Inc. and another out of China called MINO Equipment Co. — failed to pay 59 workers the overtime they had earned working at the Rivian plant in Normal, Illinois.
Executives with Mexican-owned SDS Industrialservicio S.A. de C.V. (SDS)are also implicated, but have not been cooperating.
Raoul says his office launched an investigation based on a tip from the IBEW Local 197 related to alleged workplace violations by the three subcontractors.
A joint investigation conducted by the Attorney General’s office and the Illinois Department of Labor (DOL) revealed that a chain of subcontractors hired to construct Rivian’s new production line in Normal, Illinois failed to pay overtime wages to their Mexican workers at the site.
The investigation found the subcontractors used an “elaborate subcontracting arrangement” to deny the overtime wages.
Investigators with Raoul’s office and the DOL revealed that employees at the Rivian plant typically worked between 60 and 80 hours per week, seven days a week.
Illinois law requires an overtime premium of 150% of regular hourly wages for each hour worked over 40 in a week.
The employees did not receive any overtime wages required by law.
Raoul says this makes more than $700,000 dollars in back wages recovered for those workers with more likely to come in the future.
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