Not Your Average Joe's Cited For Wage Violations

in Westborough has agreed to pay back wages after being cited by the US Department of Labor (DOL) as one of 34 Massachusetts restaurants violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Investigations by the Boston District Office of the DOL found that the restaurants owe more than $1.3 million to 478 employees.

"The restaurant industry employs some of our country's lowest paid workers, who are vulnerable to exploitation," said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. "In response to the extensive level of noncompliance we discovered, we will expand our efforts to bring the industry into compliance to ensure that employees receive the minimum wage and overtime wages required by law."

The investigation uncovered violations of minimum wage, overtime and record keeping.

"Our investigations found that several restaurants violated the FLSA by paying employees flat salaries for all hours worked without overtime pay, failing to combine hours worked at multiple locations for overtime purposes, paying incorrect overtime rates to tipped employees, making illegal deductions from employees' wages and failing to keep accurate records of employees' hours," said George Rioux, the division's district director in Boston. "Even more serious, our investigations found an emerging trend of misclassifying restaurant workers as independent contractors in order to avoid minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping requirements of the FLSA."

According to Boston.com, Not Your Average Joe’s is the only Westborough establishment mentioned in the report. In a statement, the DOL said that all of the restaurants have agreed to comply with the FSLA and have paid or are in the process of paying their employees.

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