Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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1. 

   You get drivel about aliens, abduction etc from all sorts of people, not just Christians – there are atheists, agnostics…

2. 

   […] last time I had had occasion to write about Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, above, was three years ago…

3. 

   Whatever is presented on the BBC, and I must admit I do not watch the TV, the fact is that…

4. 

   “The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material…

5. 

   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

WAGE and hour investigators in California have dealt with numerous cases of a “corrupt” employees stiffing staff, but were taken aback when they learned that one company—Che Garibaldi—had used a fake priest to take “confessions” from workers.

The U.S. Department of Labor said in a statement that Che Garibaldi’s attempt to use the “priest” to lean on employees and get them to admit workplace “sins” may be “among the most shameless they’d ever encountered.”

The Mexican food company operates three Taqueria Garibaldi outlets in Sacramento and Roseville.

It revealed that an employee testified that staff were encouraged to confess their “sins” to imposter during work hours.

Interrogation tactics

Employees were asked if they had stolen from the employer, been late for work, had done anything to harm their employer, or if they had bad intentions toward their employer.

The department found that the company not only hoodwinked staff by bringing in an imposter priest, but also denied employees overtime pay.

They also learned the employer paid managers from the employee tip pool illegally, threatened employees with retaliation and adverse immigration consequences for cooperating with the department, and fired one worker who they believed had complained to the department.

The matter was concluded when the agreed to a consent judgment, and Judge William B. Shubb in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ordered Che Garibaldi and owners and operators Eduardo Hernandez, Hector Manual Martinez Galindo and Alejandro Rodriguez to pay $140,000 in back wages and damages to 35 employees.

In addition to aiding the recovery of $70,000 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages, the judge ordered the restaurant and its owners to pay the department $5,000 in civil money penalties due to the willful nature of their violations.

The case prompted the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento to launch its own probe to determine whether or not the man hearing confessions was genuine priest.

According to the Catholic News Agency (CNA) it concluded that:

Our own investigation found no evidence of any connection between the Diocese of Sacramento and the alleged priest in this matter. While we don’t know who the person in question was, we are completely confident he was not a priest of the Diocese of Sacramento.

CNA revealed that the employee who brought the matter to the attention of the Department of Labour was Maria Parra, who said in a sworn affidavit:

I found the conversation to be strange and unlike normal confessions. He asked if I ever got pulled over for speeding, if I drank alcohol, or if I had stolen anything, The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange.

Numerous employees, said CNA, confessed to the “priest”.

Raquel Alfaro, an investigator with the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, said the workers felt Hernandez “brought the priest to intimidate them.”

Marc Pilotin, the Department of Labor’s regional solicitor who litigated the case, said:

This employer’s despicable attempts to retaliate against employees were intended to silence workers, obstruct an investigation, and prevent the recovery of unpaid wages,

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