Prime Inns Inc. – operator of a Hampton Inn hotel in Batesville, Mississippi – has paid $15,917 in back wages and liquidated damages to 25 employees after a U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) investigation determined the employer violated minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

WHD investigators found that Prime Inns Inc., based in Olive Branch, Mississippi, automatically deducted 30 minutes from employees' work time for meal breaks, even when they worked through those breaks. This practice resulted in minimum wage violations when the employer failed to pay housekeepers for all of the hours they had worked, and in overtime violations when this unpaid time resulted in employees working more than 40 hours per week, without overtime. The employer's practice of paying overtime after 80 hours in a two-week period, instead of after 40 hours in one workweek, resulting in additional overtime violations.

WHD also determined the Prime Inns Inc. edited employee timesheets to reduce their numbers of hours to avoid paying overtime, and failed to include bonuses in their calculations for overtime, causing the employer to pay rates lower than those required by law. In addition, recordkeeping violations resulted due to the employer's failure to keep accurate records of the number of hours employees worked.