A Kansas House representative and Republican candidate for secretary of state said it wasn\u2019t his fault that employees in his restaurants were not paid minimum wage or overtime pay.<\/p>\n
District 41 Rep. Pat Proctor is running for the Kansas secretary of state seat after incumbent Scott Schwab chose to leave the post in a failed attempt to run for governor. Proctor faces Democratic nominee Jennifer Day, of Lawrence and Scott Morgan, also of Lawrence, representing the Unite Kansas Party.<\/p>\n
Proctor joined Within Reason with Mike Matson on KMAN news radio Tuesday to discuss his campaign, where Matson questioned him about more than $93,000 the U.S. Department of Labor said Proctor\u2019s company owed employees for their work.<\/p>\n
Proctor owns Baan Thai in Manhattan and two restaurants in Leavenworth. Matson said records from the department showed Proctor\u2019s labor law violations meant he owed over $93,000 for minimum wage and overtime back pay from work in 2014 through 2016.<\/p>\n
In addition to Baan Thai, Proctor also had violations for The Thai Noodle, an Aggieville business that is now closed. The third restaurant involved was Proctor\u2019s Baan Thai location in Lawrence.<\/p>\n
Between the two Manhattan restaurants, 24 employees were owed $80,012. Records from the department\u2019s wage and hour division show a total of $93,009 owed to 31 employees across all three restaurants, and 41 Fair Labor Standards Act violations.<\/p>\n
Proctor said he didn\u2019t know kitchen employees had to be paid hourly, and said it was the fault of \u201cbureaucrats\u201d that he was unaware salary payment was not permitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day, here comes the labor department in saying, \u2018Hey, you owe all these people money because you didn\u2019t record their hours,\u2019\u201d Proctor said. He said he \u201cnegotiated salaries\u201d for workers instead of an hourly pay rate. Proctor said the negotiated payment was well over minimum wage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut here comes this bureaucrat into the restaurant with some regulation that we didn\u2019t know about, and it cost us,\u201d Proctor said. He said he couldn\u2019t recall if the negotiated compensation was $68,000 or $78,000.<\/p>\n
Proctor told Matson when starting his businesses he got a tax ID, filed as a corporation with the secretary of state and got a food service license from the department of agriculture and assumed the business was \u201cready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then all the letters started coming from all the other agencies that I didn\u2019t know about,\u201d Proctor said. \u201cAnd a lot of times they came with fines because we had opened without doing this or doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proctor said he believes if the government compliance is required, it is the government\u2019s responsibility to ensure people are aware of the requirement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt always stuck with me that if the government\u2019s going to make me do something, (in) my mind it\u2019s the government\u2019s responsibility to make sure I know I have to do it,\u201d Proctor said.<\/p>\n
The Kansas secretary of state is responsible for election oversight and managing business records filed by companies throughout the state. Proctor said if elected to the office he wants to use artificial intelligence on the secretary of state\u2019s website to search relevant registers and ordinances and provide users registering a business with a list of links to all requirements as well as providing documentation of all regulations.<\/p>\n
Proctor said this AI-powered information compilation would help small business owners avoid the pitfalls he experienced.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, people smarter than me, they go get a lawyer to do that, and pay $1,000, $2,000,\u201d Proctor said. \u201cThat\u2019s a huge hurdle if you\u2019ve got a little garage business and you\u2019re trying to go big time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proctor said in addition to utilizing AI for requirement notifications, he wants to get a law passed which would dictate no fines for regulation violations if the website didn\u2019t specify their necessity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Kansas House representative and Republican candidate for secretary of state said it wasn\u2019t his fault that employees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[136382,1213,93000,75,84,83,9,24,63,136379,136380,136383,136381],"class_list":["post-369314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-industrial-relations","tag-labor","tag-labor-relations","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pat-proctor","tag-secretary-of-state-of-kansas","tag-sociology-of-work","tag-united-states-secretary-of-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}