Luckily, the restaurant is now being forced to pay back the money after the Department of Labor caught wind of their shenanigans.
A Department of Labor investigation recently revealed that Win Buffet in Alexandria, Virginia and its owner, Jin Cai Shi, were responsible for a truly staggering level of wage theft from the restaurant’s kitchen employees. The violations here are surprising even for those familiar with the industry’s tendency towards wage theft and worker abuses. In addition to paying kitchen workers less than the minimum wage and not paying them for overtime over a period of almost two years (July 2, 2011 to April 1, 2013),* Win Buffet also pulled the following, via the Department of Labor’s news release:
Baltimore District Office investigators found that the company paid kitchen workers a fixed monthly salary in cash, regardless of the number of hours worked on a weekly basis. At times, they were required to work additional hours without receiving additional compensation. These employees worked six days a week for up to 72 hours.
This isn’t the first time I’ve run a wage theft story, but that level of fuckery is new to me. You see underpayment shenanigans almost constantly within the industry, but it’s as rare as it is distressing that a restaurant would be so brazen as to just not pay employees at all for time worked and pretend they shouldn’t have any reason to complain about it. All told, a consent judgment from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has ordered the restaurant to pay $227,048 in back wages to 13 kitchen employees.** Additionally, the court order enjoins Win Buffet from future Fair Labor Standards Act violations—meaning if the restaurant screws up again, the court can hold Shi in contempt.