The Labor Department recently forced Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) to disburse back pay for overtime work to about two dozen employees, as a result of a complaint made last August by students hired for the summer to compile HSA's profitable "Let's Go" travel guides.

A group of "Let's Go" assistant editors filed with the Wage Hour Division of a local Labor Department office for a review of their flat-rate salaries, which often represented less than minimum-wage compensation because these students were working more than 40 hours per week.

"Some editors were working upwards of 60 hours per week and making very little," one summer employee of the student-run corporation, who asked not to be identified, said this week.

Former Assistant Editor Margaret E. Usdansky '86 said that about four students were involved in initiating the Labor Department proceedings.

Nonprofessionals Get Overtime

Officials a Labor Department probe concluded that by government definition these assistant editors were employed in a nonprofessional capacity and thus should have been paid by the hour rather than on a first rate basis, said HSA General Manager Hope B. Spruance.

Spruance added that several other students, who had been employed by more than one HSA agency last summer, had accumulated enough work hours to be entitled to overtime pay as well.

She refused to reveal the exact amount that HSA was obligated to pay these workers last month, but said some of the student claims approached $1000.

Under Department of Labor guidelines, salaried professional employees may not devote more than 49 percent of their work time to manual labor and must supervise other workers, he said.

According to Spruance, assistant editors of the popular low-budget travel guides spend most of their time typing and do not oversee any other HSA publishing employees. Thus, they do not qualify as professional employees.

"Let's Go" Managing Editor Robert Brennan said that in the future HSA will hire more assistant editors so that none of them are overworked.

HSA's lawyer Harold Rosenwald '27, who helped found the corporation in 1957, insisted that HSA's failure to pay overtime was "pure oversight, not a willful violation."

He added that the only other incident requiring a government probe involved a misguided student who wrongly believed he was entitled to unemployment compensation after he graduated.

Spruance said she regrets that the "Let's Go" assistant editors did not inform her that HSA was violating a Labor Department code until after they had filed the complaint.

"They obviously knew they could take the issue to the labor office," she said, adding that HSA would have corrected the problem on its own and paid the students on the appropriate wage-scale.