“…Violations included charging excessive room and board to employees who also lived at a property or paying housekeepers by the room cleaned, resulting in a person’s pay falling below the $7.25 minimumwage; paying 
“straight time†for all hours worked, including overtime; and failing to pay for all hours worked by temporary employees…”
The U.S. Department of Labor said Wednesday that 35 franchised hotels and motels, including 11 in Middle Tennessee, violated minimum wage, overtime and other labor laws during the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. The agency said it fined those businesses a cumulative $14,552 and recovered more than $173,000 in wages owed to 283 employees.
Some hotel and motel operators also misclassified employees as independent contractors, denying them legal protections under federal labor laws, the agency said.
The citations and fines are part of a multiyear enforcement initiative focusing on Tennessee’s hotel and motel industry, in which regulators have “found widespread noncompliance with the minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act,†the agency said in a news release.
