This happened at my first job out of college as a graphic designer in the mid-90s. I got a job at a business card printing place. I was usually working 10 to 14 hour days, 5 days a week. This meant always overtime on the pittence they paid me.
The owner's wife took over doing accounting on our paychecks. I start getting suspicious after a few months that my pay did not seem right. I made a copy of my timecard and then looked at our my hours payed. It was off.
I went to confront her about why my missing hours. I say this day I worked 11:45, eleven hours forty-five minutes. She say yes, so that is entered as 11.45 hours and then backs it up that she has down payroll at other places before. I try to argue that is not how the math works. She won’t budge. I try to point it out to our route drivers and they just shrug. I go to the owner and he sees the math and says we will fix this weeks paycheck.
Stupid me being a naive kid did not know about the Labor Department or even just go tell the pressmen about their fucked up pay. Those guys were a different breed. That place would have been shut down until we got what was owed us.