Luciana’s citied for back pay shortages: Accounting practices being corrected, owner says

Staff Reports

The U.S. Department of Labor has announced that 101 current and former employees of Luciana’s Mexican Restaurant and Cantina will receive $54,638 in back wages following an investigation that disclosed overtime and record-keeping violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Luciana’s operates a restaurant in The Commons in downtown Columbus. It also has two locations in Indianapolis and is planning to open a restaurant in Greenwood within the next month.

Federal investigators determined Luciana’s failed to pay servers and cooks overtime as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Specifically, the restaurant chain failed to pay cooks for some of the hours they worked and paid servers overtime at time-and-one-half their direct wages of $2.13 per hour, rather than the rate on full minimum wage of $7.25 per hour as the law requires.

Luciana’s also failed to maintain accurate records of hours worked and pay received by employees, resulting in the record-keeping violations, investigators said.

The company has amended its payroll practices to ensure proper overtime calculations, the investigators said.

Alberto Bravo, who co-owns the restaurant with his wife Sarah, said the issue stemmed from an error made by the payroll and accounting firm the restaurant chain uses.

Bravo said a majority of Luciana’s former and current employees have been paid the shortages, exception for a few it hasn’t been able to locate. Three or four employees at the Columbus location were affected by the error, he said.

Bravo said he is working with the payroll and accounting firm to ensure it is doing things correctly, noting that Luciana’s wasn’t penalized by the U.S. Department of Labor.

“It was a mistake, it wasn’t intentional,” Bravo said.

Luciana’s opened in Columbus during September 2017, becoming the fourth restaurant to operate at 310 Washington St. since The Commons opened in 2011. The Bravos invested $250,000 to $300,000 to renovate the space and add new equipment, hiring about 30 people to work there.

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For more information, visit lucianasmexicanrestaurant.com.

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