Restaurant forced servers to cash paychecks — then took all but $20 of it, feds say
Servers at a Mexican restaurant in Ohio worked for only $10 a week in addition to tips left by customers, according to federal authorities. Meanwhile, officials say the cooks worked 60 hours a week without any overtime pay.
Now the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has recovered $245,509 in back wages for six servers and 12 cooks who worked for Los Mariachis amid the labor violations, according to a Feb. 14 news release.
Los Mariachis LLC, based in Wauseon, did not provide a comment to McClatchy News regarding the division’s investigation.
Federal authorities said the servers at Los Mariachis worked an average of 60 hours a week. Every two weeks, they’d be forced to cash their full paycheck, then return all but $20 in pay, according to the release.
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires tipped employees earn a “Combined Cash & Tip Minimum Wage Rate” of $7.25 an hour. The minimum hourly cash wage is $2.13 an hour.
Workers are also expected to get overtime pay — worth a rate of at least one and one-half times the regular pay rate — for hours over 40 in a given workweek.
“The $245,590 in back wages our investigation recovered will make a significant difference in the lives of 18 Los Mariachis’ workers and their families,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Matthew Utley said in the release. “No server should be forced to work for just tips and $10 per week, and no cook should be paid straight time for 20 hours of overtime. Payment of at least the minimum wage and overtime has been the law of the land for 85 years, and every person working in the U.S. has the right to be paid their full-earned wages.”
Los Mariachis’s owner has agreed to comply with federal wage laws moving forward, authorities said.
Wauseon is about 140 miles northwest of Cleveland.
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 11:07 AM with the headline "Restaurant forced servers to cash paychecks — then took all but $20 of it, feds say."