Silicon Valley company busted for paying Indian workers $1.21 an hour in America

I found this story through the Huffington Post, with this story also showing up on the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and Yahoo News.  Another source story appears to be the San Jose Mercury News.

I am going to start with the Huffington Post:

A Silicon Valley company that digitizes images said Thursday that an "administrative error" led to it paying eight workers flown in from Bangalore, India just $1.21 an hour to work 120-hour weeks installing computers in the company's headquarters.

Electronics For Imaging paid the workers $40,000 in back wages and overtime and a $3,500 fine after the U.S. Department of Labor investigated the payroll violation based on an anonymous tip, a department official told The Huffington Post.

"These folks were not only not getting time-and-a-half when working extremely long hours, they weren't making the basic minimum wage," Michael Eastwood, assistant district director for the Labor Department's San Francisco division said.

In a statement, the company said it didn't realize it was illegal to pay workers temporarily in the United States the same wages they earn in their home countries. The $1.21 was equivalent to what the employees made in Indian rupees.

Oops!  A Silicon Valley technology company decided to hire some Indian workers to install some computers at the company headquarters, but goofed up in an 'administrative error' in paying these Indians the same wages they earned in their home countries, rather than the U.S. minimum wage.  Just a simple clerical error...right?

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