A Denver-based gig staffing company committed more than 20,000 violations of employees’ wage and hour rights and has been ordered to pay more than $2.3 million in restitution, penalties and fines, the city auditor announced Monday.

The Denver Auditor’s Office found Advantage Workforce Services LLC failed to pay Denver’s minimum wage and overtime to hundreds of workers and routinely denied paid sick leave.

The auditor’s office found Advantage Workforce Services to be the same company as Instawork, a firm city inspectors found in January to have committed a litany of similar labor violations.

That investigation found that Instawork committed 1,200 minimum wage violations, more than 700 overtime violations and more than 12,500 paid sick leave violations.

The city ordered the company to pay more than $1 million in restitution and fines.

During the latest investigation, which began in May, investigators found Instawork withheld “an extraordinary amount of payroll data”, consisting of documentation of more than 14,000 shifts for 1,450 employees.

Instawork claimed these employees worked for Advantage Workforce Services, regulators found, when in reality the two companies are the same.

“Instawork has had numerous opportunities to do the right thing,” Denver Auditor Timothy M. O’Brien said in a news release. “Instead they withheld information we requested and stopped thousands of employees from receiving their rightful pay and sick leave according to the law.”

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Originally Published: August 26, 2024 at 2:11 p.m.