Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

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NEW YORK -- Two Hudson Valley restaurants and their owner will pay over $55,000 in back wages to 115 current and former employees to settle a U.S. Labor Department lawsuit alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

According to Sonia Rybak, assistant district director for the Hudson Valley office of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, her office conducted investigations at Mariners on the Hudson Inc., Highland, N.Y., and La Mirage of New York LTD, doing business as La Mirage Steakhouse and Seafood, Ulster Park, N.Y. The investigations found that 115 kitchen and wait staff employees were not paid at least the federal minimum wage or proper overtime compensation.

The Wage and Hour Division also found that the defendants failed to maintain adequate and accurate records of employees’ wages, hours and other conditions of employment and kept no record of dates of birth or working permits for 14- to 17-year-old workers as required by the law.

The department’s lawsuit, filed about a year ago in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, alleged that the defendants, including owner and president of the corporations, Ebrahim Adel, had been willfully violating the FLSA since Nov. 22, 2001.

A consent judgment, signed Dec. 24, 2005, by U.S. District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, orders the defendants to pay the 115 workers a total of $55,000 in minimum wage and overtime back wages, plus $194 in interest according to an installment schedule that requires the last payment to be made by June 1, 2006. The judgment also prohibits the defendants from future violations of the minimum wage, overtime, recordkeeping and youth employment provisions of the FLSA.

According to the judgment, the court will appoint a receiver to collect the back wages in the event the defendants fail to make any of the payments. The receiver has the power to seize and liquidate any of the defendants’ assets in order to satisfy the back wage payment order. Finally, the defendants are ordered to advise their employees of their rights under the FLSA, the terms of the judgment, and their rights to engage in protected activities under the Act without fear of retaliation. The defendants agreed to the entry of the consent judgment without admitting or denying any violations of the FLSA.

“This court action,” said Rybak, “demonstrates that the Labor Department is quite serious about enforcing the FLSA and ensuring that workers are always properly paid for all of the hours they work.”

The FLSA requires that employees be paid at least the applicable minimum wage; time and one-half their regular rate of pay for hours worked over 40 per week, and that accurate records are maintained of employees’ wages, hours and other conditions of employment. The law also regulates the employment of young workers under age 18.

The department’s Wage and Hour Division office in White Plains, N.Y. (914-682-6348), investigated this case, and the lawsuit was filed by the department’s Regional Solicitor’s Office in New York City. For more information about the requirements of the FLSA, call the Department of Labor’s toll-free help line at 1-866-4USWAGE (1-866-487-9243). Information is also available on the Internet at www.wagehour.dol.gov.

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