The owners of five Rosati’s Pizza franchise locations in Illinois and northwest Indiana must pay current and former employees $250,000 in back pay and damages after entering into a consent judgment in federal court last week.
The order comes after a U.S. Department of Labor investigation into the companies’ pay practices from May 2019 to June 2021, the agency said in a news release Tuesday. The investigation found the companies failed to pay some workers overtime, misclassified delivery drivers as independent contractors and misclassified some management employees as exempt from overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Labor Department said.
Workers affected were employed at Rosati’s Pizza at 4710 Lincoln Highway in Matteson, 10004 N. Main St. in Richmond, 12720 Illinois Route 59 in Plainfield, 272 Glen Ellyn Road in Bloomingdale and at 847 Joliet St. in Dyer, Indiana, according to court documents.
The restaurants are operated by OM Matteson Pizza Inc., OM Richmond Pizza Inc., OM Plainfield Pizza Inc., OM Krat Pizza Inc. and OM Dyer Pizza Inc., which are co-owned by defendants Kalpesh Patel and Ketan Limbachiya, according to the Labor Department.
The defendants entered into a consent judgment without contest, according to court documents. An attorney for the defendants declined to comment Tuesday.
Rosati’s Pizza did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The order by federal Judge Lindsay Jenkins requires the franchisees to pay $125,000 in back pay and another $125,000 in damages to 35 restaurant and delivery employees.
“Employers who fail to understand wage laws that apply to individual employees may find there are costly consequences for not complying with the law,” said Thomas Gauza, district director for the agency’s wage and hour division in Chicago in a statement.
