Brown agrees to pay $1.6 million for violating labor laws

Chad Brown, the three-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer, has agreed to pay $1.6 million in back pay and fines after a federal investigation determined that he had failed to pay overtime wages to hotwalkers and grooms in his barn and found other “willful violations” of labor law, according to a release from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The release states that Brown signed a consent judgment May 13 agreeing to the back pay and fines. Under the judgment and a separate agreement under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Brown has agreed to pay $1.2 million in back wages, with another $287,000 in liquidated damages and $120,000 in civil penalties, according to the release. The complaint covered the period from December 2014 to August 2017.

The investigation focused on workers employed by Brown under the H-2B visa program, which allows guest workers from foreign countries. The program carries restrictions that require employers to advertise for domestic workers prior to being granted visas for employees, along with wage regulations.

On the advice of legal counsel, Brown declined to comment.

Although a spokesman for the Department of Labor declined to comment on the scope of its investigation into trainers in New York, the probe into Brown’s labor and payroll practices appears to be part of a larger examination. Several other New York trainers have acknowledged that they are under audit by the Department of Labor, including Kiaran McLaughlin, Gary Contessa, and George Weaver. Another, Linda Rice, paid a $110,000 settlement last year, she said on Thursday.

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Backstretch workers like grooms and hotwalkers have notoriously erratic schedules and often work long hours at racetracks. Many trainers rely on the H-2B visa program to fill positions that they claim U.S. workers do not typically want.

According to the Brown complaint, grooms and hotwalkers “regularly worked upwards of 51 hours per week, with some working as many as 60 or more hours a week.” Nevertheless, the employees “were regularly denied premium pay owed” to them under the federal regulations, the complaint states. The spokesman for the Labor Department said the two Brown settlements covered a total of 182 workers.

The Brown complaint also claims that the trainer’s operation had a long list of “willful violations” of the policies for H-2B laborers, including collecting payment from the employees to cover their visa costs and failing to pay employees “the wages they were offered.” Immigration attorneys have said visa costs usually run around $10,000 per employee under the H-2B program.

Under the agreement, Brown will “institute and maintain a comprehensive H-2B compliance program,” which will entail the appointment of a compliance officer to monitor Brown’s operation, and “conduct orientation sessions to inform employees of the timekeeping system and their H-2B rights.”

The consent order comes amid a national discussion over U.S. immigration and visa policies. The White House has pushed over the past two years for restrictions on U.S. immigration, but earlier this year, the Department of Labor agreed to issue 30,000 additional visas under the H-2B program to address concerns by U.S. employers.

Rice said on Thursday that her settlement, reached last November, covered approximately $50,000 each in back wages and liquidated damages, plus $10,000 in fines.

“Last year was a very stressful year getting through all of that,” Rice said. “It seems to me that every trainer on the grounds is going through the same thing.”

Weaver said payroll issues have become enormously complicated.

“It’s difficult for us to figure out how to comply 100 percent with everything they want us to do,” Weaver said. “We’re all in the process of trying to make it work.”

Weaver did say that trainers “are not stuffing money in our pockets at the expense of employees. Most of us are maxed out.”

– additional reporting by David Grening