PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A federal court has approved a judgment ordering the owner of a Chester County restaurant to pay his employees for wage violations.
According to the judgment siding with the U.S. Department of Labor, the owner of Taqueria Moroleon in Avondale failed to pay some tipped workers a cash wage and didn’t pay for training time, meeting time, and overtime.
For those violations, owner Isidro Rodriquez has been ordered to pay about $194,000 collectively to 68 employees.
Rodriquez was also fined more than $47,000 for keeping incomplete time and payroll records and not recording some cash payments for wages.
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“These are very common violations in the restaurant industry to find that employees are not paid for overtime properly, and also that servers oftentimes are not paid correctly as far as the cash wages required to go along with tips,” said James Cain, district director for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in Philadelphia.
He said anyone employed by the restaurant during their investigation period of February 2018 through January 2021 should reach out to his department if they think they might be owed back wages.
Cain added that business owners “certainly should be taking the time to review their pay practices, and in cases like this … it can really add up to be costly for employers.”
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The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 says most employees in the United States are required to be paid at least the federal minimum wage, plus time-and-a-half their regular pay for more than 40 hours in a workweek.
According to the Department of Labor, wage theft is a big problem. In a statement, they explained that their Labor Investigation Department recovered nearly $35 million in back wages nationwide in 2021.
A message left with Rodriquez’s daughter at the restaurant asking about the judgment was not immediately returned.