Drug Rehab Workers Win $1 Million Over Arkansas Wage Claims

Two wage lawsuits brought by drug-rehab work program participants will move ahead—one of them toward awarding over $1 million—after federal judges in Arkansas and Oklahoma agreed the workers were entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay.

About 180 former participants in an Arkansas addiction-recovery program, DARP Inc., were wrongly denied pay while working at a Hendren Plastics factory, under a contract between DARP and Hendren, a federal judge in Fayetteville, Ark., determined.

The two cases cast doubt over private companies’ use of unpaid workers contracted through rehab programs, implicating Hendren as well as the poultry business Simmons Foods in...