More than 70 Colorado Halliburton oil and gas field workers will receive an average of back overtime pay as part of a $18.3 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor.

These positions included “field service representatives, pipe recovery specialists, drilling tech advisors, perforating specialists and reliability tech specialists”.

More information for employers on the overtime requirements is available online.at the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division website. “This settlement will put millions of dollars where they belong – in the pockets of hardworking people and their families”, said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez in a statement. Nationwide, 1,016 employees will be receiving settlements.

Halliburton, meanwhile, indicated that it was cooperating with federal authorities and already began to pay the overtime.

Failure to pay overtime for qualifying employees is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The probe involves oil and gas companies and the businesses that provide services to them.

“Halliburton identified a certain number of jobs that were misclassified as exempt”, said McMichael. “Ignorance is never an excuse for violating the law”. The DOL said those employees, however, have to meet certain tests regarding their job duties and make less $455 per week.

“The company re-classified the identified positions, and throughout this process, Halliburton has worked earnestly and cooperatively with the U.S. Department of Labor to equitably resolve this situation”, the spokeswoman, Susie McMichael, wrote in an email. In late July, Halliburton announced that it has cut almost 14,000 jobs.

Betty Campbell, the division’s acting southwest regional administrator, said in the press release that they welcome the cooperation of companies, like Halliburton, as they continue to “educate employers about how wage violations hurt their industry and our nation’s economy”.

It’s not been a good year for Halliburton as the company was also hit by the slumping crude oil price. “The whole objective behind overtime rights laws is to make it really expensive for companies to make employees work more than 40 hours a week”. As for their shares, it was also reported to have slightly gone down at $37.20 in the afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.