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A Japanese restaurant in Bangor reached an agreement with state labor officials Wednesday to resolve nearly 2,000 labor law violations identified during a state investigation earlier this year.
The agreement subjects Green Tea Restaurant to a four-year period of monitoring by the Maine Department of Labor and will require it to pay $100,000 in fines, according to a copy obtained by the Bangor Daily News.
If the restaurant violates the terms of the agreement, it will be required to pay the original $249,824 in penalties that state investigators assessed when it issued Green Tea citations in March and June.
Those citations, which became public after the settlement was reached, state that Green Tea paid employees in cash-stuffed envelopes at the end of the month without keeping accurate records of how much they worked; didn’t allow staff to earn paid time off; broke rules around employing a 15-year-old during hours he should have been in school; and underpaid workers by nearly $50,000 by violating minimum wage and overtime laws.
The new documents provide more specific details about the state’s labor law investigation into Green Tea, which the Bangor Daily News first reported Thursday.
An attorney for Green Tea did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
