The following article is a reprint from the Jacksonville Times Union. Thanks to Garry Smits for his work on bringing this issue to the attention of golf course owners.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Government cracks down on compensating course volunteers with free golf
By Garry Smits
If the message wasn’t received seven years ago when the Cimarrone Golf Club was ordered to pay back wages to starters and rangers who were compensated with free rounds of golf instead of pay, it might be coming through since the Golf Club of Fleming Island had to pay more than $73,000 to 19 people last November.
“It’s the law, and the government is enforcing it,” said Jack Aschenbach, president of the Northern Chapter PGA, the governing body for golf club professionals. “We’ve all got to come into compliance.”
The practice of paying golf course employees with free rounds of golf has always been illegal according to Michael Young, the Jacksonville district director for the Labor Department’s division of Wage and Hours. In-kind services can be paid only for volunteering at charity tournaments or for nonprofit facilities, such as The First Tee.
“Golf courses are not nonprofits,” Young said.
With the news of Fleming Island’s situation, other area course owners and operators have been scrambling to end the practice and are fearful of further investigations.
“Obviously, everyone has heard about Fleming Island, and I doubt if anyone is still paying people with free rounds,” said one golf course general manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the possibility of a future investigation. “We’ve changed our policy. But the government can still go back two years on this.”
Three, if clubs don’t cooperate, Young said.
Cimarrone had to pay nearly $14,000 to 24 employees in 2005. Other management companies and golf courses have been caught in similar situations going back even further.
“The laws are really nothing new,” said Hampton Golf president M.G. Orender, whose courses his company manages have been in compliance with the law since it was founded in 1999. “It’s a payroll [issue], but it’s also a liability issue. Both the employee and employer are protected by workman’s compensation. I hate to think of the issues if someone working at a golf course outside those bounds was injured on the course.”
But the practice is still so commonplace that a Google search of “golf course volunteers” still turns up websites for courses that openly advertise free rounds of golf for volunteers.
Courses in Boca Raton and Largo in Florida are examples. So is the Seminole Golf Course in Tallahassee, Florida State University’s facility, which states on the course’s web site: “Complimentary use of the golf course is provided to volunteers.”
Some of the courses offering free rounds for volunteering are municipal facilities, which means they are operated by state, county or city governments.
Young said municipal courses and state universities are not exempt. He also had a stern warning for facilities that not only are not in compliance but are advertising that fact.
“I would take [the advertisements] down and not employ people under those circumstances,” Young advised.
Fleming Island and Cimarrone avoided stiffer penalties because club management cooperated fully with the government. Young said the clubs paid only back wages and were not hit with additional penalties or fines because of their level of cooperation and because there was no history at those clubs in otherwise violating wage and hours laws.
Young said he has one other open investigation that he could not discuss. He said his division, which includes 41 counties in Florida, recently conducted a random investigation targeting 10 golf courses. Two, the Daytona Beach Golf and Country Club and the Tomoka Oaks Golf Club in Ormond Beach, were using the practice.
Fleming Island general manager Troy Albers said his club was investigated after one of the volunteers, disgruntled because he was asked not to use his free rounds during peak periods, called the Labor Department.
“Everyone had been happy with the arrangement, with the exception of one person,” Albers said. “It was a win-win for the volunteers and the club.”
Albers said that he had a volunteer force of 15, who worked as first-tee starters and on-course assistants to help keep the pace of play going. He said he now has to do those tasks with two paid employees.
Aschenbach said the subject was discussed at the most recent chapter meeting.
“It’s unfortunate that this practice has to end, because I think it was somewhat of a tradition in golf,” he said. “In this day and age, when we’ve got economic challenges and pace of play challenges, it’s not the best news a course owner or general manager can get.”
Aschenbach is a professional at the Amelia National Golf Club. He said the club has not used volunteers since it opened.
Other facilities, such as the TPC Sawgrass, the Sawgrass Country Club, the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club and the Hampton Golf courses, use only paid labor.
Jim Howard, director of golf at the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club, said: “It’s just not worth the risk.”
Others said it was a harmless practice.
“A lot of courses have used volunteers for as along as I can remember,” said an area general manager, who also would speak only under the condition that his name not be used. “It helps the golf course because it frees up the professional staff for services we give to our members and regular players and it helps the volunteers because they got to play a lot of golf. Many of them were retired, but couldn’t afford to belong to a club. It was a great deal for everyone. You’d hear guys joke about how they couldn’t wait for retirement so they could be a ranger and play free golf.”
Young said future investigations would depend on complaints.
“Anytime someone files a complaint, we’ll look into it if the complaint has validity and the law covers the complaint,” he said.
Filed under: General by Golf Course Advisors
