A Florida restaurant owner paid workers $97,000 back pay. Feds ‘bullied’ him, he says
The owner of a white tablecloth restaurant in Miramar Beach with four-star ratings on several platforms doesn’t deny he paid $97,222 in back pay to 30 employees and a $10,903 civil penalty after a U.S. Department of Labor investigation.
But Cary Shahid says he definitely wasn’t trying to cheat his Ocean Club Restaurant employees and felt “bullied” by Labor investigators.
“I felt like I was over in Russia,” said Shahid, who owns the North Florida restaurant. “They never asked about my side of the story — ever. They almost made me hate the business. There is no one who enjoys the employer-employee relationship more.
“I have done nothing wrong but accommodate my employees.”
Labor said a Wage and Hour investigation found that Ocean Club management:
▪ “Required servers to give 5% of their tips to their managers, who then re-distributed them to non-tipped workers.”
Some restaurants give this money to server assistants/busboys, hostesses and bartenders, who also make an hourly wage at or just above normal minimum wage.
▪ “Paid cooks flat salaries regardless of the number of hours they worked, failing to pay them required overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek.”
Shahid said the cooks requested to be put on salary and tried to refuse to take the back pay. All four would come to work together, he said, and clock in at the same time even though only two started their shifts immediately.
▪ “Ignored overtime obligations when it changed a manager’s status from hourly to salary — depending on the number of hours worked in the week — and failed to pay for any hours the manager worked beyond 40 in a workweek.”
Shahid blamed this on a disgruntled manager who came back to work when the restaurant reopened after pandemic closing, but was on his way out. Sahid said the manager put more time on his time card than he actually worked.
He also said a rogue manager was responsible for similar violations that Labor found in 2015, when The Ocean Club paid $50,623 in earned back pay to 29 workers. That’s why Labor levied a civil penalty against the restaurant.
The Wage and Hour complaint section of the Department of Labor website contains information on how to file a complaint. Miami’s Wage and Hour Division office can be reached at 305-598-6607.
This story was originally published July 21, 2021 at 11:26 AM with the headline "A Florida restaurant owner paid workers $97,000 back pay. Feds ‘bullied’ him, he says."
