North Carolina pizza chain Cugino Forno came under fire last week when the Department of Labor reported that 63 workers at its Clemmons, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem locations were denied full wages.
An investigation by the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division found that Cugino Forno paid employees a base rate as low as $1.19 per hour and "failed to pay the required overtime rate when applicable," according to a news release.
The investigation also determined that the employer improperly distributed customer tips to employees, taking tips left for some workers and using them to pay the wages of others.
Cugino Forno also has locations in Durham and Wilmington, though they were not yet open at the time of the investigation, according to Cugino Forno co-owner Joseph Ozbey.
After the investigation, the restaurant agreed to pay $276,048 in back wages to employees.
While $1.19 per hour sounds insane, it’s actually less than a dollar away from the federal tipped minimum wage, which has been stuck at $2.13 for more than a decade and allows employers to fund the bulk of workers’ hourly pay with customer tips.
The DOL’s news release shows a tinge of cognitive dissonance; the release criticizes Cugino Forno for forcing workers “to rely almost entirely on tips for their income,” but goes on to recognize that this is the case at most restaurants, where employees “depend on the tips they receive from customers for good service to make ends meet.”
In an interview with the INDY, Ozbey says that...
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