Dive Brief:
- A federal court has ordered two Boston restaurants, Simco’s Roslindale and Simco’s Mattapan, to pay $195,680 for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay minimum wage, failing to pay overtime and failing to maintain complete and accurate records of employees’ hours and pay, the U.S. Department of Labor said Wednesday in a release. They have also been ordered to pay a $14,980 civil money penalty.
- In addition to the fees it levies, the order requires the restaurants to cooperate with future investigations and prohibits them from interfering with any employee’s future complaints or cooperation with the DOL.
- “Too often, we find violations like these in the food service industry,” Wage and Hour District Director Carlos Matos said in the release. “Industry employers must understand that failing to pay minimum wage and overtime as federal law requires makes it harder for workers and their families to make ends meet and may have costly consequences for business owners.”
Dive Insight:
DOL has been busy in 2022. The agency requested a $30 million increase in funding for the Wage and Hour Division, citing worker misclassification and prevailing wage issues as areas of focus, and announced a plan in February to hire 100 wage and hour investigators.
As Matos noted in the release, it’s extremely common for restaurants and other food service operations to run afoul of wage and hour laws. In fact, in FY2021, food services had far and away the most violations...
Read Full Story:
https://www.hrdive.com/news/boston-restaurants-minimum-wage-overtime-violatio...
