California restaurants used alleged priest for employee confessions, must pay $140,000: DOL

A California restaurant must pay employees $140,000 in back wages and damages after using an alleged priest to hear worker confessions.

While in court, the U.S. Department of Labor said an employee testified that owner Che Garibaldi, which operates Taqueria Garibaldi restaurants in Northern California, offered employees a person who identified as a priest to hear their confessions during work hours.

"The priest urged workers to 'get their sins out,' and asked employees if they had stolen from the employer, been late for work, had done anything to harm their employer or if they had bad intentions toward their employer," according to a release from the Department of Labor.

The alleged priest was not identified by the Department of Labor. A spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento told the Catholic News Agency last week that their own investigation "found no evidence of any connection" between the diocese and the alleged priest.

Che Garibaldi operates two Taqueria Garibaldi restaurants in Sacramento and one in Roseville.

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The findings follow an investigation that found Taqueria Garibaldi denied employees overtime pay for working over 40 hours in a work week, payed managers from the employee tip pool illegally, threatened employees with retaliation and "adverse immigration consequences" for cooperating with the Department of Labor and fired one worker who they believed had complained to the department, the release states.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ordered Che Garibaldi and owners and operators Eduardo Hernandez, Hector Manual Martinez Galindo and Alejandro Rodriguez to pay the $140,000.