DOL: Coway pays $800K to 339 piece-rate workers for unpaid meeting and loading time

On Oct. 19, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor said it obtained a consent judgment requiring Coway USA Inc., a California-based home appliance company, to pay $800,000 in back wages and damages to 339 employees. The Wage and Hour Division found Coway paid employees on a piece-rate basis and did not pay them for mandatory meetings, picking up and loading supplies, or work before and after shifts, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Drafted from the DOL release excerpt; the full page did not load. No law changed, so for most owners the effect is small. This is a reminder, not a new rule. Coway's bill averages about $2,360 per worker. It matters if you pay techs, cleaners or crews by the job, flat rate or piece rate. Under federal law, meetings, loading the truck and pre-shift work count as hours worked, and piece-rate overtime is figured on all of them. Example: a 20-person plumbing shop has 8 flat-rate techs who each earn $1,200 a week and log 45 job hours, plus 5 unlogged hours at the shop. Counting all 50 hours, the overtime premium is $120 a week (half of $24 × 10 hours). Counting only 45 hours, it is $66.67. That gap is $53 per tech a week, about $21,300 a year across 8 techs. Two years of that, doubled by liquidated damages, is about $85,000. If your people are hourly and clock in when they arrive at the shop, you can ignore this.