IN BRIEF

Hard Rock Hotel to open newest tower on Dec. 28

The Hard Rock Hotel will open its HRH Tower on Dec. 28, hotel officials announced Monday.

The tower has 359 suites, eight spa villas opening onto the pool and seven penthouse suites on the 16th floor.

Nearly 30,000 square feet of expanded casino space, a 25,000-square-foot spa, three new restaurants and new nightclub will open the same date.

The opening is the latest part of a $750 million expansion that began in 2007.

The niche property opened the 450-room Paradise Tower in July. The expanded and relocated Joint concert hall and 60,000 square feet of new meeting space are among some of the other amenities that opened earlier this year.

Former employee sues Amazon, says he was denied overtime

Amazon.com Inc., the biggest online retailer, was sued by a former employee over claims the company wrongfully denied hourly workers overtime pay.

Richard Austin, who worked for Amazon from September 2008 until August, accused the company of failing to compensate workers who clocked in to work before their scheduled shifts or who clocked out after their shift ended. Austin worked more than 40 hours in any given week and didn't receive overtime, a complaint filed Nov. 25 in Seattle shows.

Austin, who worked as a warehouse associate in the company's distribution center in Las Vegas, said Amazon would routinely "round" associates' times to the nearest hour.

If employees started work seven minutes early, the company treated the employees' times as though they clocked in at their scheduled start, according to the complaint. If employees clocked out later than their scheduled times, the company wouldn't compensate for the extra minutes, the complaint states.

Austin seeks class action status for his complaint, hoping to represent all warehouse associates nationwide employed by Amazon in the past three years.

Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon, didn't return a phone message seeking comment.

WASHINGTON

Lagging mortgage companies face government crackdown

The Obama administration will crack down on mortgage companies that are failing to do enough to help borrowers at risk of foreclosure, as part of a broad effort to boost participation in its mortgage assistance program.

The Treasury Department said Monday it will withhold payments from mortgage companies that aren't doing enough to make the changes permanent. Officials will monitor the largest of the 71 participating mortgage companies via daily progress reports.

The goal is to increase the rate at which troubled home loans are converted into new loans with lower monthly payments. At the end of October, more than 650,000 borrowers, or 20 percent of those eligible, had signed up for trials lasting up to five months.

But as of early September, only about 1,700 homeowners had finished all the paperwork and received a new permanent loan. Treasury officials projected Monday that 375,000 homeowners would hit the deadline to convert to permanent modifications -- or fall out of the program -- by year-end.

To shame the companies into improving, Treasury will publish a list in December of the mortgage companies, also known as servicers, that are lagging.

Under the administration's $75 billion program, companies that agree to lower payments for troubled borrowers receive several thousand dollars in incentive payments for modified loans, but those payments aren't made until the modifications are permanent.