A northern California restaurant chain attempted to use an ostensible priest to get employees to admit workplace “sins,” the U.S. Department of Labor said.
An employee of Che Garibaldi Inc., operator of a Taqueria Garibaldi restaurant in Sacramento and another in Roseville, testified under oath that the restaurant offered workers “a person identified as a priest” to hear confessions of sins such as purloining, lateness and bad intentions or harmful acts towards their employer during work hours, according to a Department of Labor news release published June 12. The priest urged workers to “get the sins out,” the employee said, according to the news release.
A Taqueria Garibaldi restaurant in Sacramento, California. Screenshot courtesy of Google Maps.
The Department of Labor also found out that Taqueria Garibaldi “denied employees overtime pay, paid managers from the employee tip pool illegally, threatened employees with retaliation and adverse immigration consequences for cooperating with the department, and fired one worker who they believed had complained to the department,” according to the release.
The department slammed Taqueria Garibaldi’s alleged use of a supposed priest for workplace confessions as being “among the most shameless” of “scams to shortchange workers and to intimidate or retaliate against employees.” Bryan J. Visitacion, director of media and communications for the Diocese of Sacramento, said that following an independent investigation the diocese was “completely confident [that the supposed priest] was not a priest of the Diocese of Sacramento,” according to the Catholic News Agency. (RELATED: Popeyes Branch Shuttered Over Employee Complaints After Customer Allegedly Climbed Over Counter, Assaulted Employee)
Federal court judge William B. Shubb ruled in a consent judgment that the restaurant and its owners pay $140,000 in back wages and damages to 35 employees and $5,000 in civil money penalties to the Department of Labour due to the willful nature of their violations, the release revealed. The court also forbade the restaurant from muzzling, threatening and discriminating against any of its employees and from interfering with any department investigation.