Did This Employer Sell Its Soul?

This would be hard to believe if it wasn't in a U.S. Department of Labor press release!

A U.S. federal court ordered a restaurant and its owners to pay $140,000 to 35 workers who were short-changed on overtime and other pay. No, that's not the part that's hard to believe. Employers who fail to understand and comply with their obligations under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and its state law equivalents often face much bigger damages awards than that. Employers who do know their obligations and choose to flout them face even bigger penalties.

Here's the incredible part: According to DOL's press release, an employee testified at trial that the restaurant offered employees a person identified as a priest to hear confessions during work hours. The employee told the court the priest urged workers to “get the sins out,” and asked employees if they had stolen from the employer, been late for work, had done anything to harm their employer, or if they had bad intentions toward their employer.

This is not just an issue between the employer and whatever higher authority the employer answers to (higher than DOL and the courts, that is). In FLSA cases, courts have discretion to increase or decrease damages based on findings about an employer's good faith intention to comply with the law, or the opposite.

If you have questions about the FLSA or state law wage-hour issues, please get in touch with this writer or your usual Brown Rudnick contact. In the meantime, here is an interesting question to ponder: Was the restaurant obligated to pay employees for the time they spent confessing to the "priest"?

DOL's press release is at https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230612-0.