Bitmicro in Fremont fined for paying workers less than $2 an hour

Fremont tech firm Bitmicro Networks Inc. has agreed to pay about $161,268 in back wages to engineers from the Philippines after illegally paying them below the minimum wage.

The agreement, detailed in a document filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was the result of a federal Department of Labor investigation that found Bitmicro had been paying some workers $1.66 an hour.

Bitmicro, which manufactures flash storage systems, also illegally shipped goods created by these workers while they were not earning minimum wage in the U.S., according to the Labor Department.

[...] he added that the department has seen other cases like this, where international workers at tech firms aren’t being paid fairly.

Electronics for Imaging in 2013 paid some technicians from India as low as $1.21 an hour in rupees, while Bloom Energy was ordered to pay back wages to 14 Mexican workers who had earned $2.66 an hour in Mexican pesos.