http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=The+Common+Man+fined+over+youth+program&articleId=afe09b8b-677a-4705-b498-49bd33ecec28
The Common Man fined over youth program
By GARRY RAYNO
Union Leader Staff
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006
A well-known New Hampshire businessman who helped a dozen teenagers start and run their own summer business last year has been fined for child labor violations.
Alex Ray
ALEX RAY
Through the Communities for Alcohol- and Drug-Free Youth (CADY), Alex Ray, owner of The Common Man Restaurants helped young people develop a business model and run a breakfast room in The Common Man Inn in Plymouth last summer.
The teenagers, from 13 to 15 years old, designed the business model, managed the business, scheduled fellow students to staff the breakfast room from 7 to 11:30 a.m. seven days a week and made the bank deposits.
They were paid by the inn, although the business was set up as a separate entity. An AmeriCorps volunteer supervised.
"The project was a hugely successful pilot. The kids loved it, their parents loved it and the guests loved it," Ray said.
After the summer ended and the students returned to school, Ray and CADY received a letter from the U.S. Department of Labor in December citing violations of federal child labor laws involving four kids ages 14 to 15 years old. The department assessed Ray's company a $3,960 fine.
"The child labor laws are pretty strict in regards to young people and when and where they can work," said John Chavez, U.S. Labor Department regional spokesman.
Federal law prohibits children under 16 years old from working before 7 a.m. or working more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week when school is not in session.
Lisa Mure, executive director of CADY, agreed the program was very successful. Her organization encompasses the LinWood, Newfound and Plymouth Regional school districts.
"We did know about the child labor laws and we communicated to (the supervisor) and he communicated to the kids." Mure said. "The inn wanted the restaurant open by 7 a.m., so the kids said 'Let's come in and do the prep on own time so we can open at 7 a.m.' which was a good thing for the kids to do."
Mure said the project grew from a community discussion that concluded there are few activities in the area for young people outside of school or athletics.
She said Ray was involved early in the planning process. "(Ray) is very committed on a personal level because of his success in business and his early jobs in the hospitality industry," Mure said.
With an initial program, the department might have written a letter and used "our tax dollars to fight for people who really are at risk," Ray said. "If it was incorrect machinery, an exposed gas line or a 13-year-old handling an electric mixer, I could understand, but that is not the case here by anybody's stretch of the imagination."
Ray contested the fine, negotiated with the division and paid a $2,000 fine earlier this month. Chavez said that concluded the case.
Ray said he will continue the program next summer both at the Inn and at another location.
Do you guys think this merits some kind of demonstration?
How about a demo outside one or more of the Common Man Restaurants supporting Ray?
Should be easy to get the Union Leader to show up and cover reaction to their own story. It could generate some more free publicity for his restaurants too...our way of rewarding people who tangle with the feds even by accident.
Here is the restaurant website...the one called "airport diner" is located in manchester
http://www.thecman.com/HTML/Restaurants_Concord.html
Quote from: DadaOrwell on February 19, 2006, 02:18 AM NHFT
Do you guys think this merits some kind of demonstration?
How about a demo outside one or more of the Common Man Restaurants supporting Ray?
No. It looks good for talk on local radio, LTE, and you should try to contact Ray and tell him that he has friends.
sent Ray an email
contact info for the fed automaton
John M. Chavez 617-565-2075
I wonder how this would have worked out if they wouldn't have involved the government from the start. Having an americorp guy oversee? ....... ack.
We liked their restaurant in Tilton with the big guitar on the ceiling.
Maybe we should hold porc meetings at their places.
i called the chavez bureaucrat guy and told him I was with the keene free press and wanted to know how much tax money they spent protecting us from Alex Ray and his entrepreneurial education program.
I'm glad he's not letting this get him down, and is continuing the program.
Leave it to the government to punish the people who are actually helping kids grow into responsible adults.
Quote from: russellkanning on February 19, 2006, 09:26 AM NHFT
I wonder how this would have worked out if they wouldn't have involved the government from the start. Having an americorp guy oversee? ....... ack.
This is what I find confusing ? if it's a gov't program, how is it that they are now fining themselves? ::)
I think Alex ought to just tell fedgov that he'd rather owe them the money than beat them out of it.
Caleb
The Government Sucks.
(Just in case you hadn't noticed.)
I called Spokesman-Bureaucrat Chavez again and this time caught him live instead of voice mail. He was generally polite.
I had not heard back from him, but he said he was looking into it, the question of how much tax money they spent on this. I said I really wanted to know how much of my tax money had been expended. He said I was using up tax money by asking the question and having them look. I said every minute or dime you're expending on me you're not using to hurt my friends. He said oh so your a friend of Ray, that's it! I said I haven't met Ray (but he was interrupting me at this point). Somewhere I said again, I don't know Ray but but every time you persecute someone this way, for helping kids, you should expect the public to push back. He said we didn't punish him for helping kids but for violating the law. Do you think organizations should be above the law just because they're helping kids?
I said laws are not supposed to be blindly enforced; for God's sakes there are thousand of laws no one enforces because they are silly laws. I think we have a law in NH that says you can't run a biz on Sunday, but they don't enforce it, they don't push it because they realize the public would push back.
He said you're not much of an objective journalist and I said I sure am not, and want to be up front about that.
Earlier in here I asked him who was the one that actually made the decision to go after Ray; he said it was a department or branch in NH and I said you guys have a branch in NH?? And he said yes last I checked NH was still part of the Union, and I said we're working to try and fix that.
He asked for my number again, I thanked him for speaking with me. It may look kind of cantankerous on paper but it was a mostly civil exchange.
Quote from: DadaOrwell on February 19, 2006, 02:09 AM NHFT
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=The+Common+Man+fined+over+youth+program&articleId=afe09b8b-677a-4705-b498-49bd33ecec28
Ray said he will continue the program next summer both at the Inn and at another location.
Good for him. He's doing his own little protest.
Quote from: DadaOrwell on February 22, 2006, 06:34 PM NHFT
I said laws are not supposed to be blindly enforced
I 100% disagree with you. All laws must always be enforced to the fullest extend possible. We are a nation of laws.
Sarcasm doesn't come through the internet too well. Did I detect a bit there, TN?
Quote from: FTL_Ian on February 22, 2006, 10:27 PM NHFT
Sarcasm doesn't come through the internet too well. Did I detect a bit there, TN?
No. If a law is not always completely enforced it is evil to create it. If a law is bad; it must be repealed, not selectively enforced.
All laws currently on the books must be enforced to the maximum amount, IMHO.
This should definitely be something in the next issue of the Keen Free Press.
What do you think Russle?
Tracy
Quote from: tracysaboe on February 22, 2006, 11:04 PM NHFT
This should definitely be something in the next issue of the Keen Free Press.
What do you think Russle?
Tracy
Tracy, try calling him Russell. Just think of him as somone that sells rus.
Quote from: TN-FSP on February 22, 2006, 11:08 PM NHFT
Quote from: tracysaboe on February 22, 2006, 11:04 PM NHFT
This should definitely be something in the next issue of the Keen Free Press.
What do you think Russle?
Tracy
Tracy, try calling him Russell. Just think of him as somone that sells rus.
Russell! I didn't know you owned Russia! I'll give you some silver for the oil fields!
Oh, wait! Didn't you get busted for selling a bridge once! >:D
Quote from: TN-FSP on February 22, 2006, 10:10 PM NHFT
Quote from: DadaOrwell on February 22, 2006, 06:34 PM NHFT
I said laws are not supposed to be blindly enforced
I 100% disagree with you. All laws must always be enforced to the fullest extend possible. We are a nation of laws.
I understand what you're saying: if a law, fully and equally enforced, produces an unjust result, then the law is evil. Rather that creating exceptions, the law itself must be eliminated.
Kevin
I've always thought one of the most offensive police vehicles I've ever seen is an SUV with SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT written on it in huge letters.
<<All laws must always be enforced to the fullest extend possible. We are a nation of laws.>>
If you really believe that you should read "footfall" by Larry Niven...a sci fi novel about a race of aliens that try to take over the earth with the goal of making its inhabitants live stricly by whatever laws they have made for themselves. As you can imagine that would be an utter disaster, and in the novel the people of earth have enough common sense to fight to the death rather than live with strict enforcement of all their own laws.
Quote from: DadaOrwell on February 23, 2006, 01:29 PM NHFT
<<All laws must always be enforced to the fullest extend possible. We are a nation of laws.>>
If you really believe that you should read "footfall" by Larry Niven...a sci fi novel about a race of aliens that try to take over the earth with the goal of making its inhabitants live stricly by whatever laws they have made for themselves. As you can imagine that would be an utter disaster, and in the novel the people of earth have enough common sense to fight to the death rather than live with strict enforcement of all their own laws.
I don't read sci fi and I am not against a revolution. If that is what the people want; I say live and let live.
Quote from: TN-FSP on February 23, 2006, 01:31 PM NHFT
I don't read sci fi and I am not against a revolution. If that is what the people want; I say live and let live.
Or in the case of revolution, kill or let kill?
Quote from: intergraph19 on February 23, 2006, 01:52 PM NHFT
Quote from: TN-FSP on February 23, 2006, 01:31 PM NHFT
I don't read sci fi and I am not against a revolution. If that is what the people want; I say live and let live.
Or in the case of revolution, kill or let kill?
I was refering to the French Revolution ;D
Besides, you know how to use a gun, right ^_^
I'll let you borrow mine, I don't think I even need one :P
Actually, it seems like someone dies everyday, where I live. Plus, I am the Army. Death is not something that bothers me.
Got a call back from Alex Ray today saying thanks for the support. Like Keith he doesn't seem to see a need for a demonstration.
I still have not heard back from the Labor dept bureaucrat I complained to.
Quote from: DadaOrwell on February 28, 2006, 12:20 AM NHFT
Got a call back from Alex Ray today saying thanks for the support. Like big butt he doesn't seem to see a need for a demonstration.
I look at it like this. Most pro-freedom people live busy lives and don't have time to go to many protests. The larger and better planned a protest is, the more likely the media will cover it. Given those factors, it is a good to have few but good protests. 7 protests a year (with only a few 100 freedom activists in NH) may do more for freedom than 12 protests a year.
I am not saying protests are bad ;)
His next goal: Giving back
Common Man owner aims to help others
By LAUREN R. DORGAN
Monitor staff
June 03. 2006 9:30AM
Not feeling particularly Christmasy last December, Alex Ray put $30,000 in his pocket and hopped on a plane to New Orleans. There, he found people whose lives had been devastatedby Hurricane Katrina and "gave them a couple grand apiece," he said.
Ray, the owner of the Common Man restaurants, explained his method in his online diary.
"I brought a wad of dough (felt like a drug runner at Logan Airport), as it occurred to me that no banks would be open for three days, and what confidence would a NH check be to a person, handed over by a scraggly guy like me on a holiday weekend?" he wrote. "Cash is cash the world around, like salt was way back when."
When he's not on a mission to give away money, Ray spends most of his days traveling up and down Interstate 93, visiting his 13 restaurants across New Hampshire, including the Common Man in Concord and the Tilt'n Diner in Tilton.
Wrinkled and cowlicked, Ray is a 61-year-old man with the gee-whiz spark of a boy - describing Ray's insatiable curiosity, one friend calls him a "perpetual adolescent." But the ink stains on his shirt belie his perfectionism. On a recent visit to the Lake House in Meredith, he jumped up on a chair to fix a curtain and got down on his knees to examine spots on the carpet.
All this effort is not aimed at fattening his wallet, Ray said.
"I've already made the money I need to make," he explained. "We want to be a company that doesn't make money for shareholders, stakeholders, Wall Street or Alex Ray."
After 40 years, Ray said, he's tired of the restaurant business, but he doesn't want to sell off the Common Man. Instead, he wants to turn the business into a not-for-profit venture. (He doesn't want official nonprofit status, he said, because that comes with too many rules.) He sees himself as the Common Man's "guru guy," doing good works and keeping employees "proud and happy."
For a man who flies across the country to give out $30,000, Ray is thrifty. He has the New York Times delivered a week late at a cut-rate and likes to drive used cars.
Ray quotes Groucho Marx and has been known to write e-mails in rhyming couplets. He doesn't have a secretary and carries around a heap of paper scraps, saying his world is as organized "as a bowl of spaghetti." People write him e-mails all the time asking for help, he said, and he personally responds.
Like any guru, Ray occasionally speaks in aphorisms. Perhaps the most fitting for Ray is the one he attributes to his father, a jack-of-all-trades who died at 94.
"My dad always said, 'I'd rather wear out than rust out,'" Ray said.
So much to do
Katrina relief is at the top of Ray's list. Since the hurricane struck in August, Ray has visited the Gulf Coast three times, doing everything from rescuing pets to cooking meals for evacuees. His restaurants have held fundraisers and donated tens of thousands to the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity. In April, Ray drove 1,700 miles to Alexandria, La., towing a trailer full of supplies donated by New Hampshire police departments.
Ray also has a lot cooking close to home. During last month's floods in New Hampshire, he fed evacuees and rescuers around the state. He instructs advocacy groups on how to get restaurant owners to go smoke-free. He encourages the managers of his restaurants to host fundraisers for local causes as they see fit. He's also got a passion for fixing up historic buildings and has turned several into Common Man restaurants.
Ask anyone in New Hampshire's nonprofit world about Ray and they'll use phrases like "genius"and "bulldog" to describe a man who fixes on an idea and makes it happen. Colin Cabot of Loudon, who's working with Ray on a historic preservation project, said he's not convinced Ray ever sleeps.
"His hands are even more beat up than mine, and I don't know how he does that," said Cabot, who rehabilitates old buildings.
Priscilla Greene, the executive director of Concord's Red Cross, said that she's done nonprofit work for 30 years in five states and she's never met anyone like Ray.
"He's in his own class," Greene said.
One of Ray's biggest proposals yet is in Franklin, where he's talking about pouring $4 million into restoring several of the historic buildings on the Daniel Webster Farm. He envisions three interconnected uses of the space: a 30-day treatment program for recovering alcoholics and drug users, six-month transitional housing for those still in recovery and a hospitality school whose students would help run the food-and-housing side of the other two programs.
A recovering alcoholic himself, Ray said that he's been able to find places where he can get help, but he knows few facilities affordable to the average family. He aims to fill that gap.
Judge Ed Kelly, chief of the state's district courts, said that every day courts see children and adults with substance problems and nowhere to go.
Kelly, who has seen Ray's work with a number of charities around Plymouth, calls the restaurateur "energy personified."
"All my memories of Alex are of someone who's just itching to get going and to get something done,"he said. "I would describe Alex as someone who understands from a very central place in his being the struggles that people have in life and someone who wants to do something to help people."
Last summer, working with a Plymouth group called Communities for Alcohol and Drug-Free Youth, Ray allowed a dozen teenagers to run their own breakfast caf? out of the Common Man Inn in Plymouth. In addition to donating space and supplies, Ray personally trained the teens, according to the group's executive director, Debbie Naro.
The program got into trouble this winter with the Department of Labor because some kids under the age of 16 were coming in to work before 7 a.m., a violation of labor laws. Ray paid a $2,000 fine.
"Alex was like the knight in shining armor; he came in and cleaned up the mess for all of us," Naro said.
The run-in with the feds was frustrating, Ray said - he doesn't think this is the kind of thing tax dollars should be used to enforce -but it hasn't deterred him. This year, the breakfast caf? will be back, and Ray will set up an ice cream stand for the teens to run.
An unlikely beginning
Alex Ray was born in New Jersey in 1945 and spent his early years living in a gated community called Lake Valhalla. His father, Lewis, was an entrepreneur in the vending machine business who achieved what Ray describes as his neighborhood's highest value: the three-car garage.
"They thought that's what it was about," Ray said.
In 1959, when Ray was 14, his family chucked it all and moved to New Hampshire, buying a farmhouse with almost no electricity or running water. The family bought a 69-acre farm in South Conway for $6,900, Ray remembers.
As a teenager, Ray cooked at the Cranmore ski resort. But whenever people ask Ray how he got into the restaurant business, he answers "by default."
"I was a classic high school failure," he said. "It took me four years to get by Algebra I."
In 1965, Ray married and had a daughter. He enrolled in culinary school in New Haven - he calls it his "only choice"- and took a job in the management program of the Canteen Corp., which specializes in vending machines.
Ray excelled at Canteen, racking in the awards. So he was surprised, he recalls, when a senior executive took him aside and gave him some advice.
"He said, 'You're not corporate material.' And he was absolutely right: I'm rebellious. I'm a loner."
A year later, he quit and came back to New Hampshire.
Ray rented a tiny motel with a breakfast nook in Holderness, got rid of the rooms, and ran that as a restaurant in the summer.
In 1970, not long after the birth of his second daughter, Ray bought a house in Ashland, moved in the top floor and built a small restaurant in the first floor.
He named it the Common Man. "I wanted to appeal to everyone from a carpenter to a banker."
Ray and his wife divorced in 1980. For about 25 years, Ray has had a "significant other" in Diane Downing, a Common Man executive who does the "softer side" of the business, he said.
Fifteen years passed before the next Common Man opened in Lincoln in 1986. Since then, Ray has opened 11 more restaurants, many of them in renovated farmhouses, barns and mills.
He has two more locations in the works, one in Claremont - which, he said, is a city on the way up -and another in an as-yet-undisclosed location.
Today, the chain is so big that it has a construction team to lead building projects, a commissary to make ice cream and cut steaks and a company store to sell its products. Ray said he sometimes struggles with the size of his business.
"Unfortunately, I left the corporate world and now I am one," he said. "How do you run a 750-employee company and not be to them what I left?"
As a boss, Ray said he has rough edges and can be tough to work for - he'll drop in to a restaurant for an hour, reel off a list of improvements and then be off to the next place. But he likes to keep an eye out for employees, making small loans or giving raises if he thinks they're needed, he said. The company offers health insurance to wait staff, along with perks such as a community service day, for employees to use as they choose.
"I'm not good about backslapping, and that's the reality of me,"he said. "But I am good at taking care of them. . . .When your people are proud, it's just good business."
8)
Checking out their restaurants again http://thecman.com
on the way to/from the Manchester airport .... I have found our new stopoff. :)
Maybe we will have to check out their Concord restaurant for group meetings. Their lunch menu looked reasonable. 8)