Labor Department found KCK grocery store underpaid workers. It owes $340K in wages, fines
A Kansas City, Kansas, grocery store and eatery has been fined and ordered to pay back wages to nearly 160 employees for violations of federal law aimed to protect workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Supermart El Torito II, 1409 Central Ave., violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by underpaying employees who worked overtime, according to a Tuesday news release from the federal office.
In all, the grocery store must pay $155,990 to 158 affected employees, representing twice the back pay owed to account for additional damages. Another $187,546 was tacked on in civil penalties.
According to the Labor Department, El Torito workers did receive some overtime pay at the required time-and-a-half rate when exceeding 40 hours in a week. But, after 18 hours of overtime, employees were paid straight time in cash, its investigators found.
Reed Trone, Kansas City’s district director of the wage and hour division, said in a statement Tuesday that “Supermart El Torito chose to ignore the law.”
“When an employer shortchanges its workers their rightfully earned wages, such as overtime, knowingly, they take money out of workers’ pockets,” Trone said.
The small grocery chain also sells specialty foods from Mexico, Central and South America. The Kansas City, Kansas, location opened in 2006.
The violations announced Tuesday mark the second time the Kansas City, Kansas, store has been ordered to pay back wages, according to Labor Department records.
A separate investigation that spanned between 2013 and 2015 found 36 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Back wages assessed in the earlier case totaled about $47,200.
