Cilantro Mexican Grill to pay more than $100K in wages and damages

CILANTRO MEXICAN Grill has to pay more than $100,000 in wages and damages to 32 employees following a federal Labor Department investigation.
CILANTRO MEXICAN Grill has to pay more than $100,000 in wages and damages to 32 employees following a federal Labor Department investigation.

PROVIDENCE – Cilantro Mexican Grill has to pay more than $100,000 in wages and damages to 32 employees following a federal Labor Department investigation.
CMG Holding Co. LLC, doing business as Cilantro Mexican Grill, has seven locations locally that were investigated: 1255 Reservoir Ave., Cranston; 127 Weybosset St., Providence; 430 Newport Ave., East Providence; 1650 Mineral Spring Ave., Providence; 166 JT Connell Highway, Newport; 712 Center of New England Blvd., Coventry; and 1759 Post Road, Warwick.
According to a news release, the investigation found that the restaurants paid cooks and servers straight time instead of legally required time and a half when they worked beyond 40 hours in a work week.
This was done in a variety of ways, among them: entering overtime hours under a different payroll code; not combining hours worked when employees worked at more than one location in a work week to determine if overtime was due; and paying straight time for overtime in cash.
“These actions violated the overtime and record-keeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act,” the release stated.
The company also employed three minors, one 16 year old and two 17 year olds, at the Cranston and North Providence locations who were using their own vehicles to make food deliveries in violation of the child labor provisions of the FLSA.
This investigation was part of an ongoing enforcement initiative by the Wage and Hour Division’s Hartford district office to improve compliance in the Connecticut and Rhode Island restaurant industry.
As a result of the investigation, CMG Holding Co. has to pay $100,417 ($50,208 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages) to 32 employees. It has ceased the practice of employing minors to drive and paid a civil money penalty assessed for the child labor violation, the release said.
“While Cilantro Mexican Grill took action to correct its violations, they should not have occurred in the first place. Rhode Island employers must realize that underpaying workers harms not only the workers, but also places at a competitive disadvantage those employers who obey the law. They must also understand that illegally employing minors in potentially risky jobs that are prohibited by the child labor laws needlessly places young workers at risk of injury, and will not be tolerated,” Michelle Garvey, the division’s district director for Rhode Island and Connecticut, said in a statement.

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