Kansas City restaurant owed more than $42K in back wages ahead of pandemic
A Kansas City restaurant owed its employees more than $42,000 in back wages before temporarily shutting down amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Plate Restaurant, which serves Italian food on East 63rd Street, paid $42,534 in back wages following an investigation into the restaurant by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, according to a Friday press release from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The investigation found the business was unable to make payroll, violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The restaurant owed money to 31 employees who weren’t given compensation for their final pay period before the restaurant temporarily closed, according to the department of labor.
Plate restaurant did not have the available funds to pay its employees, the investigation found.
“Wage and Hour Division personnel worked with Plate ownership to assist them in their commitment to finding avenues to resolve this issue and restore rightfully earned wages to their employees,” Wage and Hour Division District Director Reed Trone said in the news release.
Trone encouraged employers to contact the U.S. Department of Labor with any questions regarding wage laws or COVID-19 measures.
Owner speaks
Christian Joseph, the owner of Plate, on Sunday said the failure to make payroll was a result of business dropping off because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Heading into the shutdown with a payday on March 17, the restaurant was counting on weekend revenue to make a Tuesday payday, Joseph said. But revenue dropped by 50 percent.
The restaurant then counted on its bank to cover the shortfall, but that didn’t happen, Joseph said. The restaurant was able to make some payroll, but not all of it, he said.
As a result, some employees went without pay they were owed for about three and a half weeks, Joseph said.
“We didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said. “We did everything we could to get it to our employees as quickly as we could.”
Joseph said he sent weekly emails to the employees and maintained their benefits. He disputed the amount of wages owed reported by the Department of Labor, putting it at $28,000.
He said the restaurant was not forced to pay the wages, but did so voluntarily.
“We did everything we possibly could,” Joseph said. “We feel it was out of our control.”
Ultimately, he said, all of the employees were paid in full and all were offered their jobs back when the restaurant returned to normal operations.
Joseph said business still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels and has several fewer employees than before. But he estimated that about 85 percent of the staff returned.
‘Our employees, in the business, is the most important thing to me,” he said.
This story was originally published June 14, 2020 at 10:23 AM.
