By Colton Shone – bio | email
Posted by Jackie Kent – email
TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) –
A group that ran a hotel near the airport got into some trouble with the federal government.
That management company is accused of holding overtime money owed to workers.
The Viharas Group used to run the Doubletree Suites by Hilton- Tucson Airport. Owner Ashok Kumar Patel was just fined $50,000 by the labor department.
With this investigation, the DOL found Viharas Group didn’t pay $20,800 in overtime to its employees over a span of two years. A department spokesperson said this isn’t shocking because the hotel industry is apparently at the top of the list for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act. In the last few years, the department got back millions of dollars for thousands of employees who were owed money.
“Since 2009, the department has done over 51,000 investigations just in the hotel industry.”
Focus Hospitality Management now runs these suites and took over last July. Since then, they said they have followed all the labor laws. The previous management company, Viharis, is delinquent with the Arizona Corporation Commission and is based in California.
Tucson News Now tried to get in contact with the managers of the hotel and the hotel chain spokesperson, but did not receive any response.
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