A restaurant operator and former Republican candidate for local office was fined 100,000 dollars for multiple labor law violations in Massachusetts this week. Robert Max Evans, the President of RME Enterprises, which runs an IHOP restaurant in West Springfield, Massachusetts, agreed to pay restitution for wage theft practices against 174 of his employees.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) uncovered an extensive range of illegal abuses including:
1. Wait staff were required to pay the costs of meals for customers who walked out without paying.
2. Workers were required to pay from their wages, the full cost of any meal in which a mistake was made.
3. Employees were required to pay out of their wages for any dish they broke during their shift.
4. Employees were charged meal deductions from their wages even when no meals were eaten.
5. Employee hours were shaved for “meal breaks” that were not taken, thus causing them to be working “off the clock” without compensation.
6. At least one employee was fired on the spot for not agreeing to pay the cost of a bill where the customer left without paying.
While Robert Max Evans’ theft from his employees may seem particularly egregious, wage theft is a widespread problem in the United States’ restaurant industry. An Anzalone Liszt Grove research survey found that 84 percent of fast food workers in New York reported being victims of some form of wage theft. A national study conducted for the National Employment Law Project, the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the Center on Urban Economic Development found that 86 percent of wait staff, cafeteria workers, and bartenders were cheated out of legally required meal breaks. 70 percent of low wage restaurant and hotel workers were denied overtime pay that was owed to them. 18 percent were paid below minimum wage for the hours they worked.
Despite the widespread abuse of workers by restaurant employers, Libertarians and Republicans continue to fight minimum wage increases and government regulations. They argue that if you get government and labor unions out of the way, benevolent capitalist employers will pay workers every penny they are worth. However, as former Republican candidate for office and restaurant operator Robert Max Evans demonstrated, many employers will try to pay workers as little as possible, even if it means breaking the law.
In 2013, House Republicans voted unanimously (227-0) to reject a minimum wage increase for America’s low wage workers. Republican Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, considered a GOP moderate, has said the minimum wage should be abolished. The conservative argument is that the market will treat the worker fairly if the government leaves employers alone. However, corporate employers who hire low wage employees have shown by their actions that in many cases they will try to cut corners and pay their employees even less than the meager wages they are legally required to pay.
It should come as no surprise that the IHOP operator who cheated 174 employees out of their pay once ran as a Republican for local office. His behavior of paying workers as little as possible is part of the party’s core principles as evidenced by their 227-0 vote in the US House last year not to increase the pay of minimum wage workers. American workers deserve a raise, and more importantly they deserve to be paid for the hours they work without being ripped off by their greedy employer.
