NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the recovery of over $1 million in unpaid wages for more than 20,000 Chipotle restaurant workers.
“Wage theft is stealing, plain and simple. It not only cheats workers out of a day’s pay – it violates our laws and my administration is committed to ensuring that workers receive every cent that they’re owed,” Hochul said.
According to a statement from Chipotle, NYSDOL required them to pay about $580,000, not $1 million. Chipotle claimed they voluntarily paid the rest before the DOL mandate.
An investigation was initiated into Chipotle after the NYSDOL received a tip from the Workers’ Compensation Board, revealing issues with paying the correct minimum wage rate for fast-food workers, which is higher than the regular minimum wage.
Following a thorough investigation, wage issues were found related to spread-of-hours pay, which requires employers to pay additional time to workers whose shifts span more than ten hours in a day. After these discoveries, NYSDOL asked Chipotle to review their pay records from December 2018 to September 2022.
During the review, NYSDOL also received a complaint alleging that Chipotle had stopped paying certain required wages.
“These issues occurred due to inadvertent payroll programming errors,” a spokesperson from Chipotle said in a statement to 1010 WINS. “As part of our commitment to supporting and properly compensating our team members, we self-corrected and properly paid many of the impacted employees last year before the Labor Department told us to do so. We have implemented changes to our payroll system to prevent this from happening again.”
Chipotle blamed a system error and reviewed records from August 2021 to July 2023, finding more pay issues. The combined investigations showed significant money was owed. Chipotle paid all active employees directly and gave NYSDOL the funds to pay former employees.
Hochul also added that in the past two years, the New York State Department of Labor has investigated and recovered more than $63 million in stolen wages for nearly 65,000 workers across New York during the crackdown on wage theft.