A local Mexican restaurant is the subject of Labor Department investigation, lawsuit says
A federal investigation into allegations that a family-owned Mexican restaurant improperly paid overtime, unlawfully seized tips and dragooned employees to work at its three Centre County eateries is ongoing.
The Labor Department wrote in a federal lawsuit filed Friday that Lupita’s Authentic Mexican Food co-owners Emilio Lopez Ramirez and Maria Guadalupe Rojas Orozco threatened and intimidated employees who reported the allegations.
The department’s investigation found Lupita’s transported at least three employees from outside of the country to the United States and then required them to work at the restaurants to repay the costs of transportation.
Some employees, Labor Department attorney Deirdre Aaron wrote in the eight-page lawsuit, were housed in an unidentified rural location without access to public transportation, leaving them reliant on the business’s co-owners.
The lawsuit also alleged that Lupita’s “threatened to throw certain employees out of employer-provided housing without resources” when they attempted to quit because of poor working conditions, including long hours without proper overtime pay.
At least one worker asked to be paid properly for overtime, but only received a portion of what was owed to them. The rest, the lawsuit alleged, was withheld “for the cost of housing rent.”
“The Fair Labor Standards Act protects a worker’s right to complain whenever employers deny them the wages they have earned. In this case, the defendants’ conduct targeted particularly vulnerable employees who were trafficked to the United States and who had to work for defendants to pay off their debt,” Labor Department regional solicitor Oscar L. Hampton III said in a written statement. “Attempting to coerce and dissuade vulnerable workers from asserting their FLSA rights, which the defendants have done here, is unlawful and cannot be tolerated. We are committed to protecting workers from this retaliatory conduct and ensuring that employees are not silenced from raising complaints about their working conditions.”
The investigation began in June. It’s been thwarted because current and former employees are apprehensive of submitting a complaint or speaking with investigators. They fear adverse consequences if they cooperate, Aaron wrote in a court filing.
No attorney was listed for Lupita’s, which owns two restaurants in the Centre Region and another in Milesburg.
Lopez Ramirez and his wife moved to central Pennsylvania in 2001 from their hometown of Oaxaca, a city in southern Mexico. He said Monday there was “one person behind all of this,” but declined to elaborate further.
