Hobart restaurant owner to pay thousands in back wages, damages after not paying employees overtime
HAMMOND, Ind. (WISH) — The owner and manager of a Mexican restaurant in Lake County will have to pay nearly $80,000 in back wages and damages to 13 employees after not paying them proper overtime and then coercing them to give back overtime payments.
An investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division opened in 2021.
A release made Tuesday says federal investigators found that Richard Serrano, the owner of El Capitan Seafood and Mexican Restaurant in Hobart, Indiana, for at least two years from June 2019 to June 2021 didn’t pay employees proper overtime.
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay their employees time and one-half of their regular pay for over 40 hours in a workweek. Instead, investigators say that the employers paid their workers “straight time,” and “failed to maintain accurate records of employee hours worked and pay received.”
Both of these violate the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Following the 2021 investigation, Serrano, and the restaurant’s manager, Luis Fernando Jimenez, agreed to pay his employees their back wages.
But after this investigation, the two were also ordered to repay liquidated damages after investigators found Serrano made his employees give back the overtime repayments.
In total, Serrano, Jimenez, and the company will have to pay the employees $78,799 in back wages and liquidated damages.
They were also asked to agree to future Fair Labor Standards Act compliance by providing employees with accurate information regarding wages paid, accurate hours, etc., in all restaurants controlled by the group.
Hobart is in northwestern Indiana, fifteen minutes southeast of Gary.