14 Southern California restaurants fined $126,142 for labor violations
Federal regulators have fined 14 Southern California restaurants a total of $126,142 for failing to pay kitchen workers all of the overtime wages they are owed and for not keeping accurate time records. (iStockphoto)
Federal regulators have fined 14 Southern California restaurants a total of $126,142 for failing to pay kitchen workers all of the overtime wages they are owed and for not keeping accurate time records.
Both are violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In an announcement released Thursday, the U.S. Department of Labor‘s wage and hour division said the eateries operate under five different banners: Phoenix Food Boutique Inc., with seven restaurants owned by Tommy Chang, May Chang and Ming Chung; Phoenix Dessert Inc., with three restaurants owned by Tommy Chang and May Chang; 101 Phoenix Inc., with two restaurants owned by Tommy Chang, May Chang and Ming Chung Ng; Phoenix Bistro Inc., with one restaurant owned by Choy Bay Chang; and T&K Inc., with one restaurant owned by Tommy Chang.
The eateries are in Alhambra, Arcadia, City of Industry, Gardena, Garden Grove, Los Angeles, Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, San Gabriel and South Pasadena.
Rafael Valles, assistant district director for the wage and hour division’s West Covina office, said employers are responsible for paying their workers all the money they have legally earned.
“We encourage all employers to use the many tools we offer to help them understand their responsibilities and to reach out to us with any questions they may have about how to comply with the law,” Valles said in a statement.
A representative for the restaurants could not be reached for comment.
Alec Levenson, a labor economist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the USC Marshall School of Business, said wage violations can occur for a number of reasons, particularly at small businesses.
“Big companies know the laws and realize that they are much bigger targets in terms of the fines they incur,” he said. “But with small restaurants, there will be a wide range of sophistication among people in terms of understanding the laws.”
Some owners may purposely ignore labor laws in hopes of saving money, Levenson said, while others might inadvertently deny workers all of the wages they are owed because they don’t understand how the guidelines work.
“In other cases, you might have an owner who is totally against skirting the law, but an individual rogue manager might still decide to do it on their own,” he said.
Wage theft may well more common among smaller companies. But when it does happen on a larger scale … the numbers are big.
A report released earlier this year by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First and the Jobs With Justice Education Fund reveals more than 500 large U.S. companies have paid out $8.8 billion in wage-theft claims since 2000, and more than half are from California.
The companies — including mega brands Wells Fargo, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, 24 Hour Fitness, Oracle and Smart & Final — have boosted their profits by forcing employees to work off the clock or by not paying their required overtime, according to “Grand Theft Paycheck: The Large Corporations Shortchanging Their Workers’ Wages.”
The longstanding practice of denying workers fair wages is “pervasive” and “goes far beyond sweatshops, fast-food outlets and retailers,” according to Philip Mattera, lead author of the report.
“It’s built into the business model of a substantial portion of corporate America,” Mattera said. “Many of these companies will say that this was an innocent mistake. But it happens so much and with so many companies that it’s hard to believe these are all accidents and that they just ran afoul of bureaucratic procedures.”
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