There have been an increasing number of investigations into restaurant labor law violations in California, according to the Inside Scoop San Francisco. Recently, the California Labor Commissioner's office found Mission's Big Lantern restaurant, Pho Clement and Blue Plate were failing to pay employees overtime wages for their time attendance.

It seems that the Labor Commissioner might be targeting restaurants, but she told the source it's an overall crackdown.

"It's not so much on a focus on one particular industry," California Labor Commissioner Julie Su told the Inside Scoop. "It's a commitment to being more proactive, more aggressive, conducting more meaningful in depth investigations, and having deputies spend more time in the field and getting wages back in workers' pockets."

Restaurant owners' best defense against payroll disputes is accurate recordkeeping. Employers can install a biometric timeclock to monitor employees' hours worked. If they are being investigated by the Wage and Hour Division, restaurants can prove they are in compliance by producing copies of the payroll archives.

Some systems are so advanced they can apply different pay rates for multiple positions and calculate break times. Because the system uses fingerprint scanning technology to clock workers in and out, employers can also eliminate fraudulent practices, such as buddy punching. 

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