For the wages of sin is . . . $145,000?

A California employer recently learned the hard way that a competent legal strategy for defending against a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claim shouldn’t include hiring a supposed priest to dupe employees. And, yes, that is easily one of the top five weirdest sentences I have ever written. Let me explain.

Cash or check

In May 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) filed a lawsuit against a company, along with its owners and general manager, that operated restaurants in Sacramento and Placer counties in California. The DOL accused the employer of implementing a scheme to avoid recording overtime hours worked by nonexempt employees and to avoid paying them at the overtime rate (time-and-a-half) mandated by the FLSA. Allegedly, the employer paid nonexempt employees by check for time worked up to 40 hours in a workweek but by cash for all time worked in excess of 40 hours to ensure those hours weren’t recorded.

Before filing the lawsuit, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) conducted an investigation into the employer’s pay practices. It alleged the employer attempted to impede the investigation by instructing employees to lie to federal investigators about the number of hours they worked. The WHD eventually issued findings that the employer had violated the FLSA’s recordkeeping and overtime pay requirements. According to some of the employees, it was at this point the employer found religion—just not in the way one might hope.

Father, forgive me