New York Restaurant Servers Win Tip Wage Settlement

Celebrity chef Daniel Boulud has reached a settlement agreement with employees who alleged that he improperly reduced their wages to account for tips. These employees worked as servers in several of his restaurants in New York, and work on a minimum wage plus tip salary basis.

Boulud maintains that he did nothing wrong, and that no laws were broken in his restaurants.

The tip wage settlement agreement would resolve the claims of approximately 90 workers who alleged that their employer broke federal and state laws by not paying them minimum wage and overtime at the correct rate.

The lead plaintiff in this case, Graciela Roman, was a former busser at two of Boulud’s restaurants. She had originally filed the wage and hour lawsuit against the chef in August 2012. On behalf of herself and other affected employees, she alleged that Boulud and dining company, The Dinex Group LLC, had improperly applied a tip credit to their wages during the time she spent each workday on tasks, where she received no tips. This new policy allegedly undercut the employees’ payment in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and New York’s Labor Law.

Roman bussed tables at Boulud’s restaurants from December 2007 to July 2009, and from October 2009 to July 2012. In that time, she claims that she and several other employees experienced the restaurants’ behavior of undercompensating tipped workers, having them make up these tips doing what they called “side work.” The “side work” duties included preparing bread stations, taking out garbage, sweeping floors or setting up dining tables. Roman said they would have her spend as much as 20 percent of her shift handling those tasks, causing her to wrongfully be paid the lower, tipped-credit minimum wage rate, instead of the standard minimum wage.

“The Boulud restaurants have a corporate policy or practice of minimizing labor costs by unlawfully taking a tip credit against the minimum wage rate,” Roman says in her wage and hour lawsuit.

In late April 2013, Boulud tried to end the proceedings by denying Roman’s allegations to Judge Hellerstein, but was denied. Judge Hellerstein states that the complications in this wage and hour lawsuit were too fact-intensive and could not be rushed for the sake of proper litigation.

Other than Roman, 24 workers are involved in this collective wage and hour lawsuit.

The Daniel Boulud Tip Wage Lawsuit is Roman, et al. v. The Dinex Group LLC, et al., Case No. 1:12-cv-06156, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

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