NEW YORK–Pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing ser­vice LinkedIn has agreed to pay near­ly US$6 mil­lion in un­paid wages and dam­ages to 359 cur­rent and for­mer em­ploy­ees, the Labour De­part­ment said .

The US De­part­ment of Labour said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion found LinkedIn Corp in vi­o­la­tion of over­time and record-keep­ing rules that are part of the fed­er­al Fair Labour Stan­dards Act. It said the vi­o­la­tions oc­curred at com­pa­ny branch­es in Cal­i­for­nia, Illi­nois, Ne­bras­ka and New York. Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia-based LinkedIn said in a state­ment that it was "ea­ger to work close­ly with the (Labour De­part­ment) to quick­ly and eq­ui­tably rec­ti­fy this sit­u­a­tion. This was a func­tion of not hav­ing the right tools in place for a small sub­set of our sales force to track hours prop­er­ly; pri­or to the (Labour De­part­ment) ap­proach­ing us, we had al­ready be­gun to rem­e­dy this."

The com­pa­ny agreed to pay the back wages once it was no­ti­fied of the vi­o­la­tions and to take steps to pre­vent them from hap­pen­ing again.Fed­er­al law re­quires that hourly em­ploy­ees get paid 1.5 times their reg­u­lar hourly rates for hours they work be­yond 40 per week. (AP)