Michigan Supermarket Ordered to Pay $192.5K in Back Wages, Penalties
A federal judge from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan has approved a consent judgment requiring the operators of Carnival Market Inc. — a Mexican specialty supermarket and restaurant in Pontiac, Mich. — to pay $192,500 in back wages, damages and penalties, after an investigation found that the employers illegally denied workers overtime wages.
During a subsequent investigation of the company’s pay practices from at least January 2021 to January 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division learned that the market’s operators, Jason Aviar and Chris Aviar, allegedly interfered with workers’ rights to speak to division investigators by instructing them to falsely tell investigators that there were no violations.
[RELATED: Albertsons Terminates Merger Agreement, Sues Kroger for Breach of Contract]
In 2020, the Wage and Hour Division investigated and found that Carnival Market had committed overtime violations by failing to pay 14 employees required overtime wages for hours worked above 40 in a week between October 2018 and September 2020.
Investigators learned that, after agreeing with the division in 2020 to pay employees back wages for overtime violations, the employers demanded that five employees kick back their back wages and threatened them if they refused. In its filing, the division also alleged that Carnival Market and its operators interfered with a second Wage and Hour Division investigation begun in 2023 by telling employees not to speak to investigators or to tell investigators there were no violations.
The division’s second investigation of Carnival Market, which covered the period of January 2021 to January 2023, revealed that the employers continued to violate overtime provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when they failed to pay some employees required overtime wages and paid non-exempt bakery employees on a salary basis, with no overtime compensation.
The amount that Carnival is ordered to pay includes $5,000 in compensatory damages for retaliating against employees during an investigation, and $5,000 in civil money penalties for repeated violations of the FLSA’s overtime and recordkeeping provisions, as well as $182,500 – representing $91,250 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages – to 12 workers who the division found were denied overtime pay.
In addition, Carnival Market must also audit and verify its current compliance with federal wage regulations, conduct FLSA training for managers, distribute and post fact sheets regarding workers’ federal rights, and provide records to the Wage and Hour Division, upon request, for at least two years.
