Chapter 14 - The labor investigation
Once the Service Accountability Ledger surfaced, our outside employment counsel told us to notify the state labor authorities and conduct an independent wage audit.
I hated that sentence.
Not because I wanted to hide.
Because it meant the problem belonged to my family office, not only Helena.
She created the ledger.
But internal payroll processed parts of it.
Supervisors scheduled corrective shifts.
HR saw some bonus adjustments.
Nobody stopped the pattern.
Over eighteen months, auditors found:
Approximately $52,000 in unpaid or underrecorded corrective labor.
About $41,000 in disputed bonus offsets.
Roughly $17,000 in meal-break and overtime discrepancies connected to Helena’s scheduling practices.
Not all amounts were legally recoverable in the same way.
Settlement with employees ultimately totaled about $138,000 including wage corrections, penalties, and interest.
The family office paid it.
Not Helena personally.
Why?
Employer responsibility.
Then we pursued separate claims against Helena where appropriate.
No fantasy where one manager alone pays every institutional failure.
If my company processed the hours, my company owned part of the problem.
That was difficult for older Belluccis to understand.
They wanted:
Bad cousin.
Remove bad cousin.
System clean.
May you like
Reality refused.
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