Los Angeles restaurant owner must pay $1.6 million in back wages and damages to his employees

The owner of a Thai food restaurant in Los Angeles must pay a fine of $1.6 million dollars for failing to pay 83 workers overtime, according to a federal investigation.

Prapai Boonyindee, owner of Ocha Classic restaurants and a Vim restaurant, will have to pay back wages and damages to his workers after a Labor Department inquiry confirmed did not pay overtime.

But the owner not only refused to pay his workers overtime, he himself made false payment reports which he later turned over to the authorities as an attempt to hide it.

As an example of these actions, the federal labor authorities detailed that Boonyindee avoided paying overtime to 26 workers at one of his restaurants located in the Korean neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The penalty that the owner must pay was divided into $825,775 as damages for back wagesan identical amount in damages and an additional $62,167 in civil penalties.

The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued an administrative order against Boonyindee to enforce the payment order by the owner.

This is one of the latest cases in which restaurant workers are affected by cases of wage theft or overtime.

California recently passed a law to protect fast food workers; however, some chains, such as McDonalds, launched a legal battle to reverse the legislation.

In 2022 alone, the Department of Labor managed to recover more than $27 million dollars in wages for the benefit of more than 22,000 affected workers.

One of these cases involved the donut chain Krispy Kreme, which had to pay $1.2 million to more than 500 workers at its 242 stores, as it allegedly paid overtime below the rate approved by the labor authorities.

Another well-known case was that of the Texas BBQ restaurant chain, which was accused in a federal investigation of some supervisors kept the tips from the workers.

The restaurant was sanctioned with the payment of $230,000 dollars after an audit in 2019, in which they found that in several restaurants the practice of not giving tips to workers had been carried out.

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