BOSTON (AP) – The New Bedford leather company targeted in a major immigration raid this winter tried to avoid paying overtime by giving out checks for extra work through a phony second company, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

That company was a front created to split up employees’ hours and hide that workers at Michael Bianco Inc. were exceeding 40 hours per week and not getting paid overtime, according to a federal suit by 500 current and former workers.

“It was clearly a deliberately created fiction,” said Audrey Richardson, a lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services, which is representing the workers.

The employees are owed at least $600,000 to $700,000 in unpaid overtime and wages, she said.

The suit also alleges that Michael Bianco had so few time clocks that workers waited in long lines to clock in, then were illegally docked 15 to 30 minutes pay if they were even one or two minutes late.

Workers also were not paid for time spent waiting in the line to clock out – sometimes up to a half hour, the suit alleges.

Employees who questioned the loss of pay were told it was company policy, or that they could find work elsewhere, attorneys for the workers said.

The company and owner Francesco Insolia declined comment on the suit.

“Neither Mr. Insolia nor the company has been charged with any labor, safety or workplace violations, and we have not seen the GBLS suit,” Michael Bianco spokesman Douglas Bailey said.

More than 360 workers, mostly Central American women, were arrested by federal immigration agents in a March 6 raid at the factory, which makes equipment and apparel for the U.S. military.

The raid prompted criticism from immigrant advocates, who said the arrests separated single parents from young children and ripped apart the community. Federal officials said no children were left stranded by the raid, and that they were simply enforcing the law.

Insolia and three top managers face federal charges of conspiring to hire illegal workers. Prosecutors say the company recruited illegal immigrants, believing they’d be more willing to tolerate poor working conditions.

Richardson said the suit was filed on behalf of both illegal and legal workers, and said the law was “crystal clear” that all employees must be properly compensated for time worked, regardless of their immigration status.

She would not be specific about how many illegal workers were represented in the suit.

Richardson said the fictitious company set up by Bianco officials, Front Line Defense Inc., made the same products as Michael Bianco for the same contracts. Insolia’s wife is listed as Front Line’s president and the companies shared employees, a building, equipment and management, the suit said.

Plaintiff Flor Chach, a former Michael Bianco employee, said she would often clock out at 5 p.m., then clock back in 15 minutes later and work another six hours. But Chach, who declined to give her age, said she didn’t receive overtime pay, instead getting two checks, with her night hours paid at the regular rate by Front Line Defense Inc.

“It’s a particularly egregious example of an employer going out of its way to violate the wage and hour laws,” Richardson said.

Phil Kassel of South Coastal Counties Legal Service, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said the case would show antagonism against immigrants is better directed against employers who take advantage of them “and hopefully help people point fingers where they ought to be pointed.”

AP-ES-05-15-07 1354EDT