Two Long Island sushi restaurants found to have improperly tracked employee time, withheld overtime pay and enforced an illegal tip pool were required to pay 70 affected employees a total of $261,887.

A ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York decided that the businesses' violations were willful, requiring the restaurants to pay an additional $26,322 in civil penalties, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Labor. The investigation and subsequent verdict were part of a multiyear enforcement initiative focused on restaurants in Long Island.

The employees involved in the case commonly worked more than 40 hours a week but received a flat salary as pay, despite not qualifying for any of the exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime provisions. The workers' tipping pool included kitchen staff, who are not legally allowed to be included in an enforced tip-sharing arrangement. Additionally, hours worked by the employees were not effectively tracked and the restaurants failed to keep adequate pay records.

A variety of easy-to-implement employee tracking solutions and time clock software allow businesses to remain compliant with the FLSA and protect themselves from litigation.

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