Wages
A New Jersey drywall installer must pay $700,000 in back wages and damages to 48 workers, plus a $25,000 civil money penalty, after the U.S. Department of Labor found the company did not pay for work employees did before their shifts, the department announced Thursday, Oct. 22.
The employer is P & B Partitions Inc. A consent judgment and final order was entered June 26, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, according to the department’s release, which was datelined Voorhees, N.J. The court order predates the department’s announcement by nearly four months.
How the money breaks down
The judgment totals $725,000, which explains why the department’s headline cites $700,000 while the body of the release gives the larger figure. The workers’ share is $350,000 in back wages and an equal $350,000 in liquidated damages, for $700,000 in all. The remaining $25,000 is a civil money penalty.
Liquidated damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act are an additional amount, generally equal to the unpaid wages, that compensates workers for the delay in being paid. Civil money penalties are assessed by the government rather than paid to employees.
Spread evenly, the workers’ $700,000 would average about $14,600 per person, but the release does not say how the money is divided, and individual amounts will depend on the hours each person worked and was not paid for.
Waiting time counted as work
The Wage and Hour Division found that the company failed to pay employees for pre-shift work, including time spent waiting for transportation to jobsites. Because that unpaid time pushed the employees past 40 hours in a workweek, the company violated the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which require pay of at least one and a half times the regular rate for hours over 40.
Charlene Rachor, the division’s district director in Southern New Jersey, said in the release that tasks done to prepare for the job, including waiting to get to the worksite in this case, are work that must be paid. Jeffrey S. Rogoff, the regional solicitor of labor in New York, said the department will take legal action to make sure employees get the pay they are owed.
The release does not name the projects where the employees worked, the period the violations covered, the company’s owners or whether the company admitted liability. A consent judgment is an order the parties agree to rather than a ruling after trial.
A familiar name in federal enforcement
This is not the first federal wage case involving a company named P & B Partitions. In October 2023, the department announced a consent judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against P & B Partitions Inc., then described as a West Berlin, N.J., framing contractor, and two individuals. That order covered $283,492 in back wages and liquidated damages for 61 employees on a development project in Lynn, Mass., along with $46,507 in punitive damages for two former employees who were fired, and a $30,000 civil money penalty. The 2026 release does not reference the earlier case or say whether the two employers are the same entity.
What it means for construction workers
Construction pay disputes often turn on when the workday starts. Under federal law, time an employer requires workers to spend gathering at a set point, waiting for crew transport or preparing for a job can count as hours worked, and in weeks over 40 hours that time carries overtime pay.
Workers with questions can contact the Wage and Hour Division at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). The department also offers an online search tool to check whether it is holding back wages owed to a worker, and a free WorkWise Timesheet app for tracking hours.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, “US Department of Labor secures court order requiring New Jersey employer to pay $700K in back wages, damages to 48 workers denied overtime pay,” October 22, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20261022
- U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division release on consent judgment against P & B Partitions Inc. (Lynn, Mass., project), October 17, 2023. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20231017
Featured photo: Workers install drywall in a building interior in Oregon, Feb. 27, 2017, in a photo from the Oregon Department of Transportation. Representative image; not P & B Partitions or the workers in the case. Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Cropped from the original.
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