PROVIDENCE � A North Providence nonprofit that employs people with disabilities and pays them below the minimum wage has agreed to pay more than 100 workers a total of $300,000 in back pay as part of a...

PROVIDENCE � A North Providence nonprofit that employs people with disabilities and pays them below the minimum wage has agreed to pay more than 100 workers a total of $300,000 in back pay as part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor.

The department contended that from June 2010 through January 2013 the company, Training Thru Placement Inc., had violated provisions of federal law pertaining to minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping. The settlement was announced Wednesday.

�TTP failed to meet its responsibilities under the law to some of the most vulnerable workers we see,� Mark Watson, the northeast regional administrator for the labor department�s Wage and Hour Division, said in a prepared statement.

The company had been operating under a certificate which exempted it from paying the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to employees with disabilities. The law, enacted in 1938, was designed to promote employment for the disabled.

The law also allows employers to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage � with conditions � if their disabilities impair their productive capacities.

At TTP, workers assembled and sorted goods by hand. But federal labor officials found that instead of calculating the wages based on workers� individual productivity levels, as required under the terms of their certificate, the school paid the students flat rates of $1 to $2.01 per day, with no regard to the number of hours they had worked or the amount of work completed, and without calculating the appropriate �sub-minimum wage� allowable based on the prevailing wage rates in the area, labor officials said.

Training Thru Placement also falsified time-study documents needed to calculate legitimate rates of pay, labor officials said. Employees were paid sporadically, sometimes going for weeks at a time between paychecks.

Based on the �severity and willful nature of the violations,� the department revoked retroactively the�company�s permit to pay sub-minimum wages. Therefore the company owes its employees the balance between what they were being paid and the federal minimum wage for that 19-month period it was in noncompliance.

The labor department noted, however, that once it notified the company it was revoking its certificate to pay below minimum wage rates, �TTP took immediate corrective action to comply with the law.�

The company replaced its board of directors and removed managers who held positions when the violations occurred. Further, TTP contracted with a service provider to assume day-to-day operations, hired new staff and provided training�to ensure future compliance, the labor department said.

Because of those corrective actions, the labor department said it was allowing TTP to continue operating and employing�workers with disabilities�under a new sub-minimum wage certificate.

TTP has also agreed to provide free benefits counseling to the workers.

�This settlement,� said Watson of the labor department, �resulted from our ongoing commitment to remedy labor violations and protect the rights of workers with disabilities.

�The law provides workers with disabilities an opportunity to work and receive a paycheck for that work. We will use available enforcement tools to prevent employers from exploiting workers.�