Tai Show eateries to pay labor settlement
This restaurant in East Setauket is one of five on Long Island headed by Walter Su; the chain has agreed to settle labor department charges that it failed to pay the minimum wage and overtime to workers. (Feb. 29, 2012) Credit: Barry Sloan
A Massapequa-based Japanese restaurant chain has agreed to pay more than $800,000 to settle U.S. Labor Department charges that it failed to pay 161 current and former employees minimum wage and overtime during a three-year period, the department announced Wednesday.
Five restaurants and the chain's president, Walter Su, agreed to the $827,418 settlement, one of the largest for the department's Long Island office, which conducted the probe that led to the accord. The eateries are Tai Show Sushi and Tai Show Hibachi, both in Massapequa; Tai Show East in Oakdale; Tai Show West in Levittown and Tai Show North in East Setauket. The accord calls for $764,796 in back wages and damages to the workers and $62,622 in civil penalties.
In a lawsuit filed earlier in February in federal court in Central Islip, the department charged that the restaurants paid some waitstaff and kitchen employees a flat monthly salary, regardless of how many hours they worked a week, lowering their wages substantially below the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage. The department also said employees who worked more than 40 hours a week didn't earn mandatory overtime pay of at least one and one-half times their regular hourly rate for those extra hours. And the restaurants failed to keep track of workers' hours, the agency said.
The company's lawyer said the case involved record-keeping deficiencies.
"This was really, as far as we are concerned, a record-keeping violation," said Glenn Franklin of Franklin, Gringer & Cohen in Garden City. "Rather than pay legal fees, the companies decided to resolve the matter amicably."
In the settlement the company neither admitted nor denied guilt.
The case, which covers alleged violations from mid-2008 to mid-2011, stems from a 2-year-old department initiative focusing on the local restaurant industry.
"Our goal is to change the behavior among violators so that workers will receive their just wages and law-abiding employers will be able to compete on a level playing field," said Irv Miljoner, who heads the agency's Long Island office.
He said that increasingly the department is seeking not just back wages for employees but damages, too. Former workers who believe they might be covered by the settlement can call the Labor Department at 516-338-1890.
