Florida restaurants owed workers $124,000 after demanding free, off-the-clock work
Two Jacksonville-area Mexican restaurants demanded employees do work before they clocked in and after they clocked out, claimed a tip credit but didn’t pay tipped workers cash wages, and violated child labor law, federal investigators found.
Also, state records say both restaurants have trouble getting “met inspection standards” on their state inspections over the last 17 months.
For the violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 39 employees at La Catrina Tacos & Tequila Bar’s Middleburg and St. Augustine locations were owed $124,592 in back wages and liquidated damages. Per worker, that’s an average of $3,194.67 or two months’ rent on the one-bedroom St. Augustine apartments available on Apartments.com.
Labor’s announcements usually don’t identify the individuals behind company names, but this one did name Middleburg’s Nora Carlon, who state and county records say lives in a 2006-built four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a jacuzzi pool, and Victoria Espinoza. State records say La Catrina’s other officer with Carlon is Zayda Espinoza, who uses the address of a 2017-built, four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,677-square-foot house in Fleming Island.
Neither Carlon nor Espinoza returned calls or emails from the Miami Herald.
La Catrina’s FLSA, child labor violations
Labor said a Wage and Hour Division investigation found that owners “Espinoza and Carlon ... required some workers to arrive before the restaurant opened to prep for the day’s shift and to clean at the end of their shifts after clocking out for the day.”
Work without pay counts as a minimum wage FLSA violation. If those hours worked would have pushed the employee past 40 hours for a week and the employee wasn’t paid time-and-a-half, that’s an overtime pay violation of FLSA.
Also, the restaurants didn’t pay a cash wage to employees who get customer tips, thus “requiring them to work for tips only,” Labor said. “By doing so, the employer could no longer claim a tip credit and owed the affected workers the full minimum wage for their time worked, including overtime compensation for hours worked over 40.”
Also, the St. Augustine restaurant, 155 Hampton Point Dr., worked three 15-year-olds more than three hours per day and 18 hours per week during school, past 7 p.m. on school nights and past 9 p.m. from June 1 to Labor Day. Each of those runs afoul of federal child labor laws, earning La Catrina a $4,746 civil money penalty.
The Wage and Hour complaint section of Labor’s website contains information if you believe your employer has violated FLSA or other labor laws. Miami’s Wage and Hour Division office can be reached at 305-598-6607. The national helpline is 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).
Inspections of La Catrina’s locations
The St. Augustine restaurant’s last five state inspections resulted in the place being closed after failing inspection on Aug. 23, 2022; reopened after passing re-inspection the next day; and “Follow-up Inspection Required” on Jan. 25, 2023, Aug. 28, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2023. The last two inspections came from customer complaints.
The Aug. 28 inspection had 29 total violations, including:
▪ “Cutting board on the main cook line has a buildup of food residue staining.”
▪ “Can opener in the prep area has old food debris on the blade.
▪ “Soda gun in the waitstation has a buildup of soda syrup inside the nozzle.”
▪ “Stored food not covered” in reference to “bulk seasoning containers in the kitchen hallway.”
▪ “Floors through warewashing and prep area have a buildup of standing water.”
▪ “No soap at the handwash sink on the main cookline. (Repeat Violation)“
▪ “Nonfood-grade bags used in direct contact with food. Plastic grocery bags used in direct contact to store raw products in the reach-in freezer.”
Two of the last three inspections at the Middleburg restaurant, 2710 Blanding Blvd., including the most recent on July 17, got “Follow-up Inspection Required.” Among the 21 total violations on that inspection were:
▪ “Three fly strips hanging near the kitchen area have an accumulation of insects.”
▪ A “pesticide-emitting strip to the immediate right of the soda machine.”
▪ Cut tomato in a reach-in cooler still wasn’t safely cooled after four hours, so got hit with a Stop Sale and thrown in the garbage.
▪ A blue cutting board had “heavy black staining.”
▪ The handwash sink by the soda machine didn’t have soap.
