Sophia’s House of Pancakes has to pay nearly $250,000 in back wages and damages to 45 employees at its Benton Harbor restaurant and 73 workers in Kalamazoo. The U.S. Department of Labor found wage violations at the restaurants from September 2010 through January 2012, including requiring servers pay the company $2 an hour out of their tips. The investigation also found the restaurants paid kitchen workers flat salaries regardless of the hours worked and refused to pay overtime; forced servers to pay $2 an hour out of their tips to work there; and failed to pay servers for work done both before and after their scheduled shifts.
Federal investigators say Benton Harbor restaurant owner Peter Philis discriminated against a server when he fired her for reporting the violations to the Labor Department. MLive reports federal officials won’t say if her complaint started their probe. John Philis owns the Kalamazoo restaurant and tells the newspaper the penalties handed down by a federal judge aren’t fair and complained Labor Department law “changes all the time.”
