A federal jury has awarded over $957,000 in back wages for 168 workers at three Wichita area restaurants. The U.S. Labor Department said the owners of the Los Cocos locations in Wichita, Derby and Andover willfully violated federal laws.
The verdict was reached in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas in a lawsuit filed by the Department of Labor against Los Cocos Mexican Restaurant. The Department’s Wage and Hour Division alleged that violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act took place from May, 2017 to December, 2022.
Regional Solicitor Christine Heri in Chicago said in a press release that the owners of the restaurants “willfully took wages from servers to pay co-workers who bussed tables and greeted diners and did not pay workers overtime or paid some less than the required minimum wage for their hard work. The Department of Labor will take all necessary actions to ensure workers receive their rightfully earned wages and will present evidence and request the court order the employers to pay employees an amount equal to their back wages in liquidated damages.”
Investigators found that, in addition to misusing tips to pay hosts and bussers and failing to pay servers and cooks overtime when required, Los Cocos’ owners did not maintain complete and accurate time records, as the law requires. Specifically, the jury awarded $567,291 in minimum wages for loss of the tip credit, $276,115 in overtime pay for “back of the house” employees such as cooks, $88,590 in withheld tips and $25,328 for other minimum wage violations.
