Posted on 03/29/2015 1:00:29 PM PDT by Kenny500c
A New York City law firm known for filing class action lawsuits on behalf of chain restaurant workers is going after Dinosaur Bar-B-Que for what it says is the systemic underpayment of tipped workers like servers and bartenders.
The law firm of Fitapelli & Schaffer said it has filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York involving all six New York state Dinosaur Bar-B-Que locations, including the one opened in Troy in 2010.
Dinosaur has made tipped workers spend at least 20 percent of their time doing non-tippable work — like rolling silverware or refilling condiments — while still paying them the reduced hourly minimum wage that tipped employees typically receive, the law firm is alleging in its suit. Fitapelli & Schaffer put out a statement detailing the contents of the lawsuit.
Talk about this story on Steve Barnes' Table Hopping blog at http://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/
The law firm has already filed a similar class action lawsuit on behalf of TGI Friday's workers, and is representing apprentices and assistant managers of Chipolte in another case.
Also, the lawsuit claims Dinosaur did not pay time-and-a-half for employees working past 40 hours a week, forced tipped workers to pay a $10 fee to managers when receiving gratuities from pre-booked parties, and did not provide required extra pay to employees who worked more than 10 hours in a day, which "unlawfully burden the collective rights of their employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law," according to the law firm.
No one from Dinosaur's corporate office could be reached for comment Sunday.
The lawsuit is filed against Dinosaur Restaurants, LLC, JLN-Store, Inc. f/k/a Dino-Store, Inc., Soros Strategic Partners LP, and founder John Stage, and targets workers at the Brooklyn, Buffalo, Harlem, Rochester, Syracuse and Troy locations. Dinosaur, which started as a food cart at a motorcycle rally in Duanesburg in 1983, was founded as a restaurant in 1988 in Syracuse and has now expanded to Newark, N.J. and Stamford, Conn. — with restaurants soon opening in Chicago and Baltimore.
A Times Union story in September detailed how the Troy Dinosaur has created half of the 80 jobs it promised when it received a 20-year payment in lieu of taxes agreement from the Troy Industrial Development Agency in 2009. But the company said the data was faulty because they had only reported the number of workers they had during a slow Christmas week, and that full-time equivalent hours added together would total 89 workers in 2013.
Yabba dabba doo time! Can you supersize the soda though?
I have a Stewart’s nearby that has the least comfortable seats imaginable (similar to diamond plating); most people eat in their cars anyway (with the trays attached to the windows), but the few tables they have wouldn’t encourage you to linger.
Not a good idea to push restaurants, the robotics tech to replace workers for them is already pretty mature.
http://www.chonday.com/Videos/cojeyjapa2
I was wondering the same thing, so looked at Amazon. They have it in hardcover and paperback. Title is Dinosaur Bar-b-cue An American Roadhouse.
LOL!
I had the same thought. I have made it one of my idle pastimes to read headlines that are...ambiguous and make up alternate stories.
You know what they say, simple pleasures for simple minds.
Same here.
We had large amounts of side work, including food prep.
Also required to help bus tables when necessary, work cashier, load dishwashers and the few that were really handy...help the cook.
It never occurred to me to say...hey, you aren’t paying me to do that. I’m gonna sue!
Different times I guess.
Thanks!
20 bucks on amazon.
I think you and I were the only ones who noticed.
The article isn’t as interesting as the title made it sound.
It is not out of bounds, but the restaurant is requiring them to forego tips to supplement their income and not compensating them for their losses by paying a higher wage during their time when they cannot earn tips.
When you consider that, on an average day, a wait person might make $30-$40 a day, during non peak times, if you lose an hour/day to wrap utensils, that could more than a few thousand dollars over the course of a year.
Prbably www.topsecretrecipes.com.
In their books, you can get him versions of many commercial recipes.
It’s not the fact they have to do duties outside their core-responsibilities, it’s the fact that they aren’t being paid a suitable wage when they have to do those duties and forego tips.
Dinosaur tipping sounds much more exciting than cow tipping.
"Slings!!??!"
Sorry that I can’t agree.
Those duties were part of the job.
Even today, when I have left the service industry, there are things that I am required to do that are outside of my job description. My employer doesn’t drop my wages to coincide with those tasks.
It sure wasn’t as interesting as I thought it might be. :)
You're most of the way there. Soros grew up in Hungary, which was occupied successively by Nazis and Communists—and he worked happily betraying his people to each in turn.
I'm from Rochester - I was visiting about 18 years ago and went there with my cousin. This one was run by bikers and was actually pretty decent at that time. I left Rochester in '74 when I joined the AF and as time goes by, it is less and less savory when I visit the remaining family up there.
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