The U.S. Department of Labor recently recovered $1,651,550 in back wages and liquidated damages from a Los Angeles restaurant owner.
Prapai Boonyindee, owner of six Ocha Classic Restaurant locations and Vim Restaurant, reportedly denied overtime wages to 83 workers and kept false pay records to hide the wage theft, DOL said in its news release issued Jan. 3.
"Wage theft is used by unscrupulous restaurant industry employers to increase their bottom lines at the expense of some of our nation’s lowest paid workers," DOL Wage and Hour Division Principal Deputy Administrator Jessica Looman said in the news release. "We work tirelessly to recover hard-earned wages owed to workers like these, and employers who disregard workers’ rights accountable for their illegal pay practices and their attempt to mislead our investigators."
Boonyindee intentionally failed to pay the workers for overtime and falsified pay records to show the workers had not worked past 40 hours in a workweek, both actions in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to the news release.
The Ocha Classic and Vim restaurants are not the only food service companies where DOL has found wage violations, according to the news release. In fiscal year 2021, DOL's Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $34.7 million for more than 29,000 food service industry workers.
Mistreating workers isn't very smart just now, when industry workers can more easily choose their working conditions, according to the news release, which cited a Bureau of Labor Statistics report for last year that found almost record numbers of job openings and workers quitting their jobs.
