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.
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.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
