CLINTON - A dispute with the Connecticut Department of Labor has transformed the owners of an East Main Street pizzeria into soldiers in the battle against "Big Brother"-style government.Michael and Migdalia Nuzzo recently appeared on Fox News' popular "Fox and Friends" morning show, on Headline News' Prime News, on NECN and on Hartford TV channels WFSB and WVIT. They also have been interviewed by ABC.com, WCBS radio in New York, and a Canadian radio talk show host."I didn't realize how immense this was going to get. I didn't know it was going to go national, even global," says Michael Nuzzo.
The Nuzzos filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New Haven May 20 after a labor department investigator came to their restaurant, Grand Apizza Shoreline, on May 12 and told them their three children are not allowed to help out at the restaurant under a state law that prohibits minors from working in certain occupations. The investigator said he was responding to a complaint, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that the state's actions violate the Nuzzos' First, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to liberty, privacy, due process, family integrity and equal protection of the law. It asks the federal court to bar state officials from keeping the children "from learning the pizza trade under their parents' tutelage at the family restaurant."
The lawsuit has been turned over to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is reviewing the case.
Michael Nuzzo says he filed the lawsuit in order to "stand up for myself and my family. I want them to let my children come to work. Let me raise my family the way I want to raise my family. It's an intrusion of privacy. My home is my children's home, and my restaurant is an extension of my home."
The Nuzzos say their children - ages 13, 11 and 8 - are not paid to work in the restaurant but simply help out, mostly on the weekends. The oldest helps out in the kitchen while the two younger siblings greet customers and help with the tables.
"When I told my kids they couldn't come to the restaurant any more and help dad out, my little one started to cry," Michael Nuzzo says. "I walked down to my attorney's office."
The Nuzzos hired Clinton attorney Raymond Rigat, who filed the lawsuit.
Michael Nuzzo learned the pizza trade as a young boy helping out his own father, Fred Nuzzo, who started Grand Apizza in New Haven in 1955 and sold it in 2005. "I learned more from my father working in his business than I did in college, studying accounting," he says. His two brothers also operate pizza restaurants, Grand Apizza in Cheshire, Conn., and Apizza Heaven in Sedona, Ariz., and his sister works at the Cheshire restaurant.
He says the state is not only attacking a family tradition, it's also victimizing the owners of family businesses statewide.
"My dad taught me about family, tradition, respect, integrity and hard work," Nuzzo says. "He would say to us, 'if you work hard, good things will come. You can live the American dream.' We are living the American dream, me and my brothers.
"I feel like I'm talking for all other family businesses too. We are the backbone of this country.
We pay our dues, we pay our taxes. We don't ask for bailouts, we just work harder. All we do is get knocked down."
For now, the children are staying home. "My 13-year-old is devastated," Nuzzo says. "He loves coming to the restaurant."
Nuzzo's father Fred, 84, and his mother Rosemarie, 80, also are upset, he says. Fred Nuzzo comes to the restaurant on Friday nights and still helps make pizza pies.
"My dad was a tail gunner in the Air Force and flew 34 missions during World War II," Nuzzo says. "When he sees his grandson helping out in the kitchen making pizza, he lights up like a Christmas tree, he's so proud of him. He's really upset about it."
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