Meyer’s Family Restaurant Pays More Than $116,000 in Back Wages

Meyer’s Family Restaurant, 4260 S. 76th St., has agreed to pay $116,102 in back wages to 38 employees following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division that disclosed violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime pay and record-keeping provisions.

The investigation, conducted primarily in Spanish by bilingual wage and hour investigators, determined Meyer’s failed to compensate workers with overtime pay at time and one-half their regular rates of pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a week, as required by the FLSA.

The company also failed to record all hours worked by employees, paid cash for some hours, and kept no record of those hours worked, the cash payments made, or the tips received, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

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“Food service workers often work long hours in physically demanding occupations. These workers deserve to be paid properly,” said Theresa Walls, director of the Wage and Hour Division’s Minneapolis District Office in a release. “The resolution of this case should remind employers that the department will not hesitate to investigate if they deny workers their rightful pay. We are committed to protecting the many vulnerable workers employed in the restaurant industry and will vigorously pursue violators to ensure compliance with the law.”

Owner Larry Meyer said the restaurant has already paid the back wages, implemented a system to monitor payroll for overtime hours and is now under full compliance with labor laws. He said the situation arose from paying some employees a salary, employees the U.S. Department of Labor classified as hourly employees.

“We were under a different impression of what the law is,” Meyer said. “Some of the skilled labor, we’d negotiate a weekly wage, or a salary. We were under the impression that was fine. It was not. You can’t salary anybody and everybody.

“We were surprised that we weren’t able to do a lot of the things we were doing. They were understanding of that. They didn’t come down too hard on us; there were no fines or penalties.

“I didn’t have any trouble with it. The law’s the law. I’ve been doing this 48 years. Sometimes my thinking is old schooled. I got an education.”

The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for all hours worked, plus time and one-half their regular rates of pay for hours worked beyond 40 per week. In accordance with the FLSA, an employer of a tipped employee is required to pay no less than $2.13 an hour in direct wages, provided that amount plus the tips received equals at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct wages do not equal the minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference.

Meyer's, located at the intersection of Cold Spring Road and 76th Street on the southeast side of the Spring Mall lot, was established in 1961.