Posted on March 23rd, 2020
Below is a complete transcript of this video.
What’s happening in fellow entrepreneurs is John Fagerholm home again. And today I want to talk about why it’s important to comply with the labor laws. Especially if you’re a small business.
Irrespective of what you think of them. I know some are egregious, I know some are just completely ridiculous, but the ramifications of not following the labor laws just aren’t worth it.
So, I wanted to bring up a news article that I read about a company called gen wall Korean barbecue. Excellent, excellent place. Actually one of my favorite Korean barbecue spots just because they, uh, the food is good, the atmosphere is great, the service is wonderful, but they always give a little extra.
It’s, it’s just when you think they’ve, uh, they’ve taught themselves, they give you something more, uh, all the way in, all the way out.
They’re just giving you all of these, reasons to like them and to like going there.
Well, so that’s why this article caught my attention cause I know general very well. I’ve eaten there many times. It used to be,when we were at our old office, it used to be our annual, Christmas lunch with all the employees used to be a Gen Y because it’s just so wonderful.
Well, anyway, this article is talking about how gen Y got hit with a $2.1 million fine from a, from the California department of labor.
That fine was for violations to minimum wage, um, rest breaks, meal breaks, um, over time split shifts you know, a lot of violations there.
So I don’t know if it was just out of ignorance or, um, if, you know, the management at Jen wall was trying to save a little money, but at the end of the day, 2.1 million. And the interesting thing is that, um, 1.4 something of it was a back pay to the to the employees.
But 633,000 or so was civil penalties to the state. That’s what you have to realize. If you’re a business owner and you take these shortcuts in order to you know to make a little extra profit or make your business run smoothly, whatever the reasoning behind it is, and you think to yourself, well, if they catch me, I’ll have to pay back whatever it is.
But it’s not like that. It’s the civil penalties are just too much, you know, and so 633,000 of that going to the state of California.
Now what, what is it that the state of California did to possibly earn the 633,000? Was that their legal fees mean? Who knows? I understand that, that there are penalties to prevent people from doing it, but 633,000 and I don’t know what gen Y does.
I know they have a ton of employees and they have several restaurants around. So I dunno, maybe they can sustain this. Maybe they can’t.
But at the end of the day, $2.1 million would hurt anybody. So my advice is, especially the big ones, I mean, there’s little ones that sometimes you can.
I’m not advising anybody to, to, to not comply with the law of course, but, but there’s a big difference between not complying with something small and something big like meal breaks, rest breaks minimum wage.
Oh my God. I don’t know how they were not paying minimum wage. I mean, it could have been in the math and it could have been because they were improperly doing their split shifts.
So they were saying, well, you should’ve paid them for that hour. So when you don’t add that up, then, you know, it’s below minimum wage.
It could have been something like that. I can’t imagine Genewa , just pays less than minimum wage.
I mean it seems a little insane to me. If, if there’s any business out there doing that, then you shouldn’t be in California, that’s for sure.
All right, fellow entrepreneurs, until next time, be productive.
