Proprietors of Two New Amherst Restaurants Fined More Than $500,000 for Violations in Plymouth and Boston
The former Savanna's restaurant will become the Amherst Public House, under the ownership of Paul Tupa and Peter Lucido. Photo: Trip Advisor
The owners of two soon-to-be-opened restaurants in Amherst, The Amherst Public House and the Uptown Tap and Grille, were ordered last month to pay $476,351 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office for child labor, sick time, wage and hour, and payroll-record violations at Plymouth’s Tavern on the Wharf and Plymouth Public House. Both restaurants are owned by Peter Lucido and Paul Tupa as partners. The fines were reported on January 20 in the Plymouth Independent and on January 23 in the Patriot Ledger, a newspaper serving Boston’s South Shore.
That report quotes Campbell’s office as saying, “These restaurant owners engaged in a pattern of violating workplace protection laws that are designed to protect workers, especially our young workers.”
The Patriot Ledger further reported that “Paul Tupa was previously cited by the attorney general’s office in connection with a prior investigation into wage and hour law violations at SNP Restaurant Group, doing business as Red Hat Café in Boston, when he was its president. In that matter, citations totaling nearly $80,000 in restitution and penalties were issued.”
Massachusetts child labor laws impose requirements such as limiting the hours that employees under 18 can work and the kinds of jobs they can do. State law also requires employers to have youth employment work permits on file for all workers under 18, and minors generally must be supervised after eight p.m.
Neither Lucido nor Tupa offered comment on the fines at the time of the news reports.
Lucido and Tupa plan to open the Amherst Public House in the location formerly occupied by Savannah’s on University Drive and the Uptown Tap and Grille in the downtown location that was formerly Amherst Burger Company.
Lucido and Tupa both earned restaurant and hospitality management degrees at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the 1990s.
While I am not a fan of government regulations, wage and hour ones are fairly serious because you are dealing with quite vulnerable employees. Child labor laws exist so that children won’t be falling asleep in school — I’ve had it happen and it is damn false economy for a kid to get $13/hour and then sleep through lessons that are costing us the town a whole lot more.
Amherst currently pays $24,212.57 per child. That becomes $134.51 a day as opposed to the $108 that the student could earn in a full 8 hour shift, which he’d never get at a bar. So he works 9-1 and gets $54 dollars — and sleeps through the instruction that the town is paying $134.51 to receive. This is setting the child up for failure.
And one of the things that were SUPPOSED to be discussed at bar license applications is if the people seeking the licenses were of “good moral character. Anyone inquire into any of this before the licenses were granted? Make a phone call to the AGO’s office? Or even anyone sacrifice a Friday night to go see what the remote venues looked like???
I agree completely!
WOW!!!!! This is not cool!!! Especially since it was clearly deliberate!!!!!! I have followed the upcoming locations to open in Amherst. My son is a Jr there and jobs are pretty hard to get. We have talked about this. Both of these places would be a great place for him (and his friends) to get jobs.
NOT now!!!! Taking advantage of kids. And kids who need the jobs so they just take it. I am sharing this on The UMass Amherst Family to Family page!!!!
BIG MISTAKE and SHAME ON YOU