WESTBROOK – Talk about bad timing.

Olympia Sports, the sporting goods retailer with stores in Lewiston and Auburn, had already installed a new electronic tracking system to monitor employees’ hours when it got caught.

A Maine Department of Labor examination of time sheets from February 1999 to February 2001 revealed the retailer had 852 labor law violations involving minor-aged employees. The bulk of them occurred prior to 2000, when Olympia installed its new electronic monitoring system.

The state filed a suit over the violations. On Thursday, a settlement was reached. Ironically, at the same time, the state is touting the company’s tracking system as a model for other companies.

The retailer, which has 20 stores throughout Maine, will pay a $186,000 civil penalty because of the violations.

“Employers must be aware of the laws governing employment of minors,” stated Assistant Attorney General Gwendolyn D. Thomas in a release. “Now that Olympia has put into place a comprehensive tracking program that has successfully prevented further child labor violations from occurring, it is a model for other employers in the state. Other employers can learn from Olympia’s experience.”

“The program has been working well for us ever since,” said Richard Coffey, president of the company. The program uses software installed in the electronic cash registers to record when each employee begins and ends a shift. The information is sent to corporate headquarters each week where it is checked for compliance with state and federal labor laws.

Coffey said a good percentage of the employees who work at Olympia Sports stores are teenagers, who are covered by more stringent labor laws than adult workers. The laws stipulate the number of hours a minor can work on a daily and weekly basis, as well as restricting the times of work and the number of successive days.

Managing hours for minor employees is a struggle among retailers everywhere Coffey said, “especially when the kids and their parents are asking for more time.” He said the majority of violations were employees working 10 minutes too long on an hourly basis or 50 minutes too long on a weekly basis.

Coffey said the company worked out the time sheet software program with its computer supplier at the time it upgraded to avoid the Y2K bug. He said the company takes labor laws seriously and worked cooperatively with the state to investigate the violations.

It also held training seminars for its managers to make sure everyone understands both federal and state labor laws.

“(The computer program) can track everybody so we can see if there are violations, but that’s after the fact,” said Coffey. “We’re trying to prevent the violations from occurring in the first place. (The program) allows us to catch anything we missed.”

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