In a recent victory for workers’ rights, the U.S. Department of Labor has successfully recovered $101,694 in back wages and liquidated damages on behalf of 10 chefs at Imanas Tei, a sushi restaurant in Honolulu. The restaurant’s owners, Keiji Fukuda and Yuki Naka, had denied overtime pay to their salaried chefs, many of whom worked up to 20 hours of overtime per week, by mischaracterizing their primary work as management instead of meal preparation.

The Wage and Hour Division’s investigation revealed that this misrepresentation led to the restaurant’s failure to provide the legally required overtime pay to the chefs for hours worked over the standard 40-hour workweek, resulting in a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Additionally, the division discovered that Fukuda and Naka did not maintain records of all hours worked, including overtime hours, which constituted federal recordkeeping violations.

Terrence Trotter, the Wage and Hour Division District Director in Honolulu, emphasized that employers like Imanas Tei must honor their obligation to pay workers their legally earned wages. “Overtime earned must be overtime paid,” he stated.

As a result of the investigation, the Wage and Hour Division not only recovered the back wages and damages for the affected workers but also assessed $4,488 in civil money penalties due to the willful nature of the violations. In the 2022 fiscal year, the division recovered over $27.1 million for more than 22,000 workers in the food service industry. This comes as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported near-record numbers of job openings and workers in the accommodations and food services industry leaving their jobs in 2022.