Feds recover $2.3M in LI wage violations

A federal initiative targeting Long Island's pizza and pasta restaurants for minimum-wage and overtime violations has recovered $2.3 million in back wages for 578 restaurant workers, the U.S. Labor Department announced Tuesday.

More than 30 restaurants agreed to pay the back wages and fines of $202,315 for "willful and repeated" violations, the department said in announcing the tally.

The initiative began in October 2010 and continues, said Irv Miljoner, who heads the Long Island office, which conducted the investigations.

"We are going to continue to target restaurants as a high-violating industry," Miljoner said. Wage and overtime violations at restaurants, he said, "are among the highest of any industry on Long Island."

Newsday reported on some of the settlements earlier this year. The largest was $800,000, which Mama's Pizzeria and Restaurant in Copiague agreed to pay to settle Labor Department charges that it deliberately failed to pay 40 employees overtime during a three-year period even though they frequently had to work 70 to 80 hours a week. That practice, the department said, effectively dropped their weekly pay below minimum wage.

Under federal law, eligible employees currently have to earn at least $7.25 an hour, and at least 11/2 times their regular rate when they work more than 40 hours a week.

In settling, Mama's Pizzeria didn't admit the charges. Gaetano Pinello, who owns Mama's Pizzeria with his wife, Grace, maintained that his restaurant did nothing wrong and that he lost 25 percent of his business as a result of the publicity.

"You can't win with the Labor Department," he said Tuesday. "Everybody was getting paid. I just wasn't logging it down."

Mama's Pizzeria was one of the restaurants in the tally announced by officials Tuesday, Miljoner said.

He attributed widespread restaurant-industry violations to the presence of a large immigrant population here that usually works in restaurants, especially in kitchens; the competitive nature of the business; and the slow economy.

"There is a lot of pressure on businesses to cut costs," he said.

The most common violations include paying employees off the books, and paying them a set amount regardless of how many hours they work, Miljoner said. The investigations looked at employees' work times going back two to three years, the department said.