Local & State

Upstate

Mexican restaurant chain to pay back wages to workers

Upstate Mexican restaurant chain Pancho’s and Papa’s and Beer Mexican Restaurant have agreed to pay 85 employees a total of $485,913 in back wages after investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a release. Pancho’s Inc., which operates three Pancho’s Mexican restaurants in Central, Pickens and Liberty, and Papa’s and Beer in Greenville violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime, minimum wage and record-keeping provisions. The violations were uncovered during investigations by the department’s Wage and Hour Division. Pancho’s agreed to pay $414,079 in back wages to 38 employees, while Papa’s and Beer agreed to pay $71,834 to 47 employees. The investigations were part of a multiyear enforcement initiative focusing on the restaurant industry in South Carolina, where widespread noncompliance with wage laws has been found.

Nation & World

Ancestry.com agrees

to $1.6 billion buyout

Genealogy website Ancestry.com has agreed to be acquired by a group led by European private equity firm Permira Funds in a cash deal valued at about $1.6 billion. The offered price of $32 per share is a nearly 10 percent premium over Friday’s closing price of $29.18. The company operates a website for researching family history and has more than 2 million paying subscribers.

Class action lawsuit claims Wal-Mart violated minium wage, overtime laws

NEW YORK Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is being slapped with a lawsuit that claims that the world’s largest retailer and its staffing agencies broke federal minimum wage and overtime laws by requiring temporary workers to appear early for work, stay late to complete work and work through lunches and breaks without compensation. According to the proposed class action suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Illinois Eastern Division, Labor Ready and QPS, two of the staffing agencies that the discounter used in the Chicago area, failed to provide workers with required employment information. The suit also claims that Wal-Mart also failed to keep accurate records, making it hard for workers to make claims that they were not paid properly. Dan Fogleman, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said that the company is still reviewing the complaint but that “is being driven by the same union organizations that have been mischaracterizing several issues about Wal-Mart” and that the company is committed to ensuring workers in its stores are treated right.

State-owned Russian oil giant buys joint venture between BP, Russian oil titans

MOSCOW Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft strengthened its hold on the country’s lucrative oil industry when it sealed a deal Monday to buy TNK-BP, the 50-50 joint venture between BP, the British energy country, and a group of Russian oil oligarchs. The new combined company will leapfrog ExxonMobil Corp. to become the world’s largest publicly traded producer of oil and gas, in terms of output. ExxonMobil’s latest earnings show its daily output at 4.2 million barrels of oil, below the expanded Rosneft’s projected 4.6 million. In a parallel development, Rosneft said it had agreed to buy the other 50 percent in the joint venture from AAR, for $28 billion.

Jeff Wilkinson and The Associated Press contributed.