TAMPA, Fla. — The U.S. Department of Labor said a pair of St. Petersburg restaurants were guilty of multiple violations, including withholding wages to cover other costs.
According to a Department of Labor investigation, the business, Red Mesa, Inc., which operated as Red Mesa Restaurant, and Veytia Ventures, which operated as Red Mesa Cantina, violated provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Specifically:
- Withheld bartenders' and servers’ tips to cover the cost of customer walkouts, which ranged from $10 to $175 per day.
- Deducted the cost of uniforms from employees’ wages which led some workers to be paid less than minimum wage.
- Paid an incorrect overtime rate to tipped employees and failed to combine hours when these employees worked at both restaurants in the same workweek. By doing so, the restaurants paid overtime at rates lower than required by law for hours over 40 in a workweek and failed to pay for all overtime hours in some workweeks.
- Paid kitchen staff straight time regardless of how many hours they worked. By doing so, the employer failed to pay them the additional half-time rate required for overtime hours.
- Failed to log workers’ hours in payroll records correctly, which kept some workers off payroll records.
The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division recovered $190,730 in back wages and damages for 89 workers who were victims of the employer's actions.
ABC Action News spoke with employment attorney Scott Silverman who said this investigation likely came as a result of a random complaint or due to a federal audit.
He said that while there isn't a state law against "wage theft," there is a Pinellas County ordinance that addresses the issue.
"An employee that believes that [they have] been subjected to wage theft can file a complaint with the Pinellas [county] agency in charge of the investigating and that would be completely separate from what is happening in this case," he said.
We also spoke with another employment attorney, Ryan Barack, who said this is an issue that is investigated often in the sunshine state.
"Of the 10 most populous states, Florida is the one where wage theft is the biggest problem. The most money is being stolen from employees in Florida," he said.
He said there are a number of reasons why this happens.
"One of the reasons would absolutely be because Florida has a number of service employees and individuals who are working in the service industry. We also have a more transient workforce," he said.
Peter Veytia III, the owner, and operator of Red Mesa Inc. released the following statement:
“A Department of Labor investigation in 2021 calculated amounts of overtime, uniform expenses, and other monies owed to each employee. In 2022, we took that amount, doubled it, and paid our employees to make things right. We were extremely distressed to learn about this situation in 2021, and have aggressively taken far-reaching steps to make sure something like this never happens again. As part of this process, we terminated the outside firm that had handled this part of Red Mesa’s business. As a family-owned, local business, we know we would never succeed without our high-quality employees. We want our employees to know they are being treated fairly every day.”
