Upstate Owned Restaurant Operator Pays Over $32,000 In Back Wages For Department Of Labor Violations

(Seneca, SC)————————A press release issued by the United States Department of Labor yesterday says that Whiteford’s, Inc., which is based in Greenville, SC, and is the operator of 30 Kentucky Fried Chicken and Arby’s Restaurant’s in South Carolina and Georgia, has paid over $32,000 in back wages to 298 employees for violating the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

The investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division revealed that the employer failed to include workers’ performance-based bonuses in the calculation when determining their overtime rates, resulting in violations for assistant managers and shift leads who received these bonuses every four week. According to the release, excluding these amounts from the calculation resulted in the employer paying these workers overtime rates lower than those required by law. 

In addition, the release states that the employer deducted a portion of some employees’ wages for uniforms, which resulted in minimum wage violations when those deductions cause workers’ hourly wages to dip below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.