Cecilia Baza, 25, said she knew the whole time she worked as a cashier at a Wingstop restaurant in East Long Angeles that she was not earning minimum wage.
She learned from her mother, who also worked a minimum wage job, that large employers in unincorporated L.A. County were required to pay workers at least $15 per hour by July 2020 — up from $14.25 the year before.
As of June 2020, she said she was making $13.
She said she pointed out that she was making below the legal hourly minimum to her employers, but they “didn’t budge.” So she asked the county, which sets the minimum wage for the area.
Baza’s inquiry — along with the pay stubs she provided — set off alarm bells inside the county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. After a two-year investigation, the department announced this week that two Wingstop locations in unincorporated L.A. County will pay more than $667,000 in fines and back wages.
Far West Restaurant Group, which franchises the two Wingstops, agreed to the settlement — the largest since the county’s minimum wage law went into effect in 2016 that set the wage floor for all businesses operating in unincorporated L.A. County.
After auditing payroll records and time cards and interviewing employees, the county found the two Wingstop locations repeatedly flouted the minimum wage rules between 2017 and 2021, paying their employees as little as $2.25 less per hour than the minimum wage, and issued a wage order against Far West. The minimum wage is now...
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