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Restaurant Worker Rights: Eliminating Tips Backfires

Is Eliminating Tips a Good Idea?

Last year, a restaurant owner in San Francisco, Thad Vogler, took the initiative to eliminate tipping in both of his restaurants in a search to increase restaurant worker rights. Such a move in the restaurant industry is expected to have a positive impact on its tipped workers as well as back of the house workers. With tips eliminated, wages were set increase to benefit its workers. This pay raise was made possible by ...

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Gramercy Tavern Sued for Unpaid Wages

Two former tipped workers of the Michelin-starred restaurant Gramercy Tavern are suing owner and restaurant mogul Danny Meyer for unpaid wages. Meyer, who also owns several other restaurants such as Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, Maialino, Jazz Standard, The Modern, North End Grill, and Union Square Café under the parent Company Union Square Hospitality, has been accused of being in violation of federal and state labor laws.

The ex-employees allege that they were not paid correctly and are consequently seeking ...

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Minimum Wage Increase for Fast-food Workers’ is Upheld

Handing down a victory for restaurant worker rights, the decision to increase the minimum wage for fast food workers to $15 an hour in the state of New York has been upheld by a state oversight board. On Wednesday, the New York Industrial Board of Appeals rejected arguments made by the National Restaurant’s Association that claimed the mandate to increase wages was arbitrary and unfair by focusing on national chain restaurants with 30 or more locations.

Earlier this year ...

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Papa John’s Franchisee Fails to Pay Employee Wages, Gets Jail Time

On November 16, 2015, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a press release stating that Abdul Jamil Khokar, a franchisee of nine Papa John’s restaurants in the Bronx,  pled guilty for failing to pay wages under the New York Labor Law (“NYLL”). BMY Foods, Inc., the corporation which owned and operated the Papa John’s franchises with Khokar, pled guilty of falsifying business records. Khokar will serve 60 days in jail, and will pay $230,000 in restitution to his ...

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Restaurants Are Eliminating Tipping

Joe’s Crab Shack has announced that they will be dropping tipping as a method of payment for all of its restaurants.  Employees of Joe’s Crab Shack will now be paid $14.00 per hour, but there is also the potential for pay to vary based on each particular employee’s past performance at the restaurant.  Joe’s Crab Shack’s parent corporation, Ignite Restaurant Group, first experimented with this policy at 18 of its locations, and will now be implementing it at all 113 ...

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Oaxaca Taqueria Overtime Lawsuit

On November 5, 2015, Fitapelli & Schaffer, LLP and Pechman Law Group, PLLC  filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Oaxaca restaurants in New York City.  The lawsuit is filed on behalf of all servers, cooks, kitchen assistants, counterpersons, delivery persons, and other Restaurant Workers (collectively, “Restaurant Workers”) who work or have worked at Oaxaca Taqueria located at the Upper West Side (“Oaxaca Amsterdam”) located at 424 Amsterdam ...

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