Orlando pizza restaurant ordered to pay $120K in back wages to 24 employees
UKRAINE - 2021/01/08: In this photo illustration a hundred us dollar banknotes seen displayed. (Photo Illustration by Mykola Tys/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
ORLANDO, Fla. - An Orlando pizza chain has been ordered to pay $120,000 in back wages to 24 employees following a U.S. Department of Labor investigation.
Chicago-based pizza franchise Giordano's Pizza denied its workers overtime wages and paid servers only in tips with no cash wage violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a news release.
Giordano also failed to keep complete time and payroll records.
The law requires that most employees in the U.S. be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for all hours worked and in Florida, the minimum cash wage for tipped workers is $7.98.
"The operator of this Giordano’s franchise deprived employees of their rightful pay, making it much harder for them to support themselves," said Wage and Hour Division District Director Wildalí De Jesús in Orlando, Florida. "We can’t give them time back, but the $120,695 in wages the department recovered for these workers will go a long way toward making them whole."
The employer told the U,S, Department of Labor that they contracted a third-party service provider to manage payroll functions and claimed the provider did not raise concerns about the employer's pay practices.