Another restaurant enterprise, with two stores in West Virginia, has acknowledged violating minimum wage and overtime pay laws as the result of a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) investigation.

Black Bear Burritos LLC will pay $232,295 in back wages to 105 workers, and has promised to comply with wage laws going forward.

The investigation showed that Black Bear illegally required servers to share tips. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, tips belong to the employees who receive them, although management may credit tips toward its obligation to pay minimum wage. An employer may not take an employee’s tips for a tip pool, and if an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct wages do not equal minimum wage, the employer must pay the difference during that pay period.

The investigation also revealed that salaried managers illegally received money from the tip pool.

In a statement, Black Bear said, “We did not pocket a penny of gratuity; we just distributed them incorrectly by including kitchen staff and general managers in that distribution.”

And, it seems, many of the restaurants’ workers respect their employer. On former employee said, “This is a wonderful … business, run by two honest and hard-working family men from WV.”

Read the whole story on WBOY.com. 

Wage abuse is rampant among certain types of workers, and as one investigative news site explains, the violations often are concealed and regulators have difficulty identifying them because workers are afraid to speak up.

“Fear of retaliation is the number one reason why workers do not complain about wage theft,” Julie Su, California Labor Commissioner, said.  Because enforcing fair labor laws depends primarily on investigating complaints, “We rely on the cooperation of workers,” she said, and “don’t know who’s not coming forward as a result of fear. [But] as long as people struggle with job security, there will be fear.”

One case currently underway illustrates the issue. Karim Ameri, the owner of a Los Angeles recycling business, was under investigation for allegedly failing to pay minimum wage or overtime to employees who worked 60 hours a week. Court documents say Ameri pressured employees to lie to federal officials about his company’s pay practices, and allegedly threatened to fire or report workers to immigration authorities if they cooperated with U.S. Labor Department investigators.

One document said he even threatened physical harm, and officials got a restraining order to bar threats or interference with their investigation.

It’s illegal to punish or threaten workers to keep them from filing a wage complaint or cooperating with an investigation.

The allegations against Ameri are only one of many horror stories around the country told in the lengthy investigative piece. “[E]ven without threats,” it says, “wage violations often go unreported, either because workers don’t know their rights or believe complaining will only get them fired. If they are undocumented immigrants, as many low-wage workers are, fear of being reported to immigration authorities also keeps them silent.”

Read the whole story on FairWarning.org.

The proposed settlement of a lawsuit filed on behalf of about 1,800 workers at a Wal-Mart warehouse and distribution center will cost Schneider Logistics Inc. $21 million in unpaid wages, interest and penalties.

The violations occurred from 2001 to 2013 in Southern California, where Schneider contracted with the giant retailer. It alone, not Wal-Mart, is the financially responsible party.

The workers, with assistance from  the Warehouse Worker Resource Center in finding legal representation, sued Schneider in October 2011 for major wage theft against “lumpers” — workers, mostly Latino immigrants, who load and unload boxes by hand from shipping containers. They often worked double shifts of 16 hours a day, seven days a week, but did not get required breaks or overtime. They often worked for less than minimum wage, according to the suit.

They were paid on a piece-rate, not hourly, basis that was found to be illegal and since has been revised. The settlement is expected to be final later this year.

“Thank God we’re now going to receive compensation for the years before when they didn’t pay us well,” said one of the workers involved. “I see those years as abusive … when we’d only earn $100 to $150 a week.”

Read the whole story on Latimes.com.

Six Hawaii restaurants in the upscale Roy’s chain got busted for forcing the wait staff to share its tips with the kitchen staff.

A U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) investigation resulted in Roy’s Holdings Inc. agreeing to pay $225,000 in tips and back wages to 326 servers. The DOL determined that the wage violation was not willful; that is, the restaurants didn’t  understand that they had violated the law, and officials gave the company credit for correcting the problem quickly, and also developing a plan to ensure compliance with the law.

It’s not against the law for servers to tip kitchen workers voluntarily, but it violates the Fair Labor Standards Act to require servers, who work for less than minimum wage, to share their tips with the kitchen workers, who make at least minimum wage.

In addition to the problem with tips, one restaurant was fined $1,550 for allowing a minor to load a trash compactor. That is considered a hazardous occupation for workers younger than 18.

Read the whole story on WestHawaiiToday.com.

Day laborer Alvaro Campos removed a tree for a man who agreed to pay him more than $100. When the work was done, the man paid Campos $20.

Selvin Reyes worked at a floral shop for two years, sometimes working more than 70 hours a week. He never received overtime pay, even though his pay stubs showed the beefy hours he worked.

These stories from Colorado are only two of millions of cases of wage theft, a crime officials and advocates say costs workers millions of dollars every year. Often, the victims are immigrants, legal or undocumented, because they’re reluctant, unwilling or unsure of their rights, or how to report the thefts. Reclaiming what is rightfully theirs is especially difficult for day laborers, who generally work without a contract and often for employers they don’t know and aren’t likely to meet again.

If a gig is for just one day, the employer is more likely to pay the full wage than a job that lasts a week or two. The employer for the longer-term job often pays the worker only a little at a time, promising the full amount the next day … which of course, never comes.

Colorado investigators review more than 5,200 wage claims each year, or about 430 each month, and that’s just a fraction of the whole picture, and the $1.1 million state officials help workers recoup annually represents far less than what is owed and that workers never see.

Colorado legislators passed a bill last week to make it easier for state investigators to pursue wage-theft cases and to make it easier for workers to file a claim.

“Coloradans who work a hard day’s work, deserve a fair day’s pay,” said one state senator. “When folks agree to do the dignified work of picking a field, building a house,or even of showing up and flipping burgers, they should be treated with dignity.”

Read the whole story on AuroraSentinel.com.

The arena is the California State Assembly, and, for once, the traditional combatants — labor advocates and the state Chamber of Commerce — came together in agreement rather than as adversaries.

The subject? Wage theft.

Labor unions in particular have mobilized across the country to go after companies who steal money from their workers in several ways: paying less than minimum wage; withholding overtime pay; keeping tips that belong to the employees; and/or denying rest breaks. In California, the unions are trying to get lawmakers to pass bills giving regulators more authority to pursue law-breaking employers.

The chamber isn’t necessarily holding union hands in that effort, but it does agree that wage theft is a legitimate concern, especially for low-wage earners. A couple of weeks ago, representatives of the chamber, the California Federation of Labor  and the state Labor Commissioner jointly launched a public campaign to raise awareness of the problem and to educate workers and employers.

Read the whole story on LATimes.com.

Five hotels and their managers and owners have been sued by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in Ohio for violating minimum wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The lawsuits seek back wages and damages for 89 workers at the Baymont Inn & Suites, the Country Inns & Suites and two Four Points by Sheraton in Columbus, and the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Reynoldsburg.

DOL investigators found violations of the FLSA’s minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping provisions for 61 workers employed by Darpan Management and Fantastic Cleaning. The workers were housekeepers, attendants and laundry staff. The housekeepers, according to the suit, were employees, but Darpan/Fantastic had misclassified them as independent contractors, paying them by the room. That meant they often didn’t earn the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The employees also weren’t paid the legally required overtime at time and one-half the regular rate when they worked more than 40 hours in a week. They’re owed, the DOL says, $42,288 in back wages.

Another investigation found that 28 people employed by Darpan as hotel staff are owed $11,181 in unpaid minimum wage and overtime. Some weren’t paid for the time they spent training, and workers got overtime pay only after they had worked more than 80 hours in a two-week period, instead of the required 40-per-week measure. Darpan also failed to maintain accurate and complete payroll records.

Read the whole story on the Norwalk Reflector.

When is a work shift a work shift, and when is it charity?

That’s the issue in Florida, where a former police sergeant sued the City of South Miami last year for unpaid overtime wages. Last week, the city’s lawyer recommended that it settle the case for $17,500, split between the cop and his attorney.

Michael Weissberg said in his complaint that he was “required to work approximately 30 minutes off-the-clock … for activities he performed at the City of South Miami Police Department prior to Roll Call.” The activities, he said, included putting on and taking off his uniform, maintaining his weapon, maintaining his police car and cleaning and maintaining his work uniform.

Weissberg’s attorney, Brian Pollock, said, “We look at it as a positive result. I think it sets a precedent, because the city is paying for the previous work that Mr. Weissberg did at the station before and after he clocked in. I think it sets a precedent for the other patrol sergeants who did the same thing and weren’t paid for the time. I think it opens the door for each of those patrol sergeants to come forward.”

The city denied that Weissberg’s activities are compensable under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, and that the time he spent cleaning his uniform and maintaining his take-home vehicle is barred by the collective bargaining agreement.

Read the whole story on the Miami Herald.

The latest high-profile business to be sued by an intern for labor law violations is Sirius XM Radio.

Melissa Tierney, a former intern on the satellite radio broadcaster’s Howard Stern Show claimed that during her five months on Stern’s show in 2011, she spent as many as 36 hours a week running errands, reviewing news clips and going on food runs for on-air personalities and their guests, earning exactly nothing.

She says Sirius illegally misclassified her as exempt from minimum wage protections. The company, says her complaint, “would have hired additional employees or required existing staff to work additional hours” if it didn’t have the services of unpaid interns like her. This violates federal and New York State minimum wage laws, she says, as well as a New York ordinance on wage theft.

According to the Sirius XM website, its internships are unpaid and available only to enrolled college students who will receive credit.

Some people claim that unpaid internships deprive people of modest means from sometimes valuable work experience, because only the well-off can afford to work for free. That’s not a labor law issue, just an element that makes these cases about more than fair wages. The legal issue here is about who benefits more from the intern’s time — the intern or the company — and how much the intern can reasonably be expected to learn from the experience.

Even the White House has come under scrutiny for its unpaid internship program, but government offices are exempt from the rules covering when an internship must be paid.

Read the whole story on the Huffington Post.

Last month, Condé Nast settled a lawsuit over the simmering issue of interns. Company CEO Chuck Townsend issued a staff memo describing the resolution of Ballinger v. Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. that tried to spin the best possible scenario despite the company’s clear disrespect of the law and the value of all members of its work force.

Last year, Lauren Ballinger and Matthew Leib filed the lawsuit, claiming that they had been paid below minimum wage during their summer internships at, respectively, W magazine and The New Yorker. A few months later, Condé Nast decided it would discontinue its internship program.

The Townsend memo didn’t discuss terms of the settlement, but it did defend the company:  “The settlement will allow us to devote our time and resources towards developing meaningful, new opportunities to support up-and-coming talent.”

Apparently that includes lopping off the internships because it doesn’t want to fairly reward the workers who hold them. As Townsend said, “Our internships were considered some of the best in the industry, providing students with unparalleled learning opportunities outside of the classroom.”

Read the whole story on CapitalNewYork.com.