A federal court entered a consent order that requires two Fairfield County restaurants and their owners to pay $150,000 to nine workers who were forced to kick back thousands of dollars of back wages and liquidated damages.
Christopher Delmonico, the owner of the former Chubby”™s in Bridgeport and the co-owner of The Ole Dog Tavern (formerly Lazy Dog Tavern) in Stratford, and Niall O”™Neill, co-owner of The Ole Dog Tavern, agreed to pay $137,465 in back wages and liquidated damages settle charges that their restaurants violated the Fair Labor Standards Act”™s (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime requirements.
According to charges brought by the U.S. Department of Labor”™s Wage and Hour Division, Delmonico and O”™Neill threatened workers to force them to kick back approximately $50,000 that the employees were owed. The employers allegedly fired one employee for requesting the full amount of back wages and liquidated damages that the worker was owed, and the restaurant owners used threats of blacklisting, termination and law enforcement and immigration consequences to achieve their results.
The department added that the employers also allegedly made disparaging comments about an employee to potential future employers and drove two workers to a bank to cash their checks and then demanded payment outside the bank.
The department sued the defendants in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut in March 2021 and obtained a consent preliminary injunction preventing them from retaliating or discriminating against their employees.
In addition to paying the workers $50,000 in the kickbacks they accepted and $90,000 in punitive damages, the employers must also pay $10,000 in back pay to one employee who suffered a retaliatory firing. The order also permanently enjoins the defendants from future violations of the FLSA”™s anti-retaliation provision.
“These employers violated their agreements to compensate their employees properly, illegally pressuring them to kick back monies that belonged to the workers in the first place,” said Wage and Hour District Director Donald Epifano in Hartford. “The Wage and Hour Division does not tolerate retaliation of any kind. Workers who believe their employers are retaliating against them because they exercise their rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act should contact us.”
