Restaurant Server Files Minimum Wage Overtime Lawsuit

Plaintiff Cheryl R. has filed a minimum wage overtime lawsuit against her former employers, Boathouse Restaurant Inc.

According to the minimum wage overtime lawsuit, she alleges that her employers violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by failing to pay her for the hours that she had worked and failing to pay her overtime hours worked as well. These, according to the minimum wage overtime lawsuit, are violations of the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the FLSA.

Additionally, the plaintiff “asserts a supplemental state statutory claim for her unpaid wages under the Indiana Wage Claims Statute.”

According to the minimum wage overtime lawsuit, Cheryl is a resident and citizen of the state of Indiana. She was employed by her former employers in Kosciusko County, Ind., and began working for them in July 2015.

She alleges, according to the overtime lawsuit, that she would work approximately eight to nine shifts a week, and would work a consistent double shift, from 10:30 a.m. till 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., three days per week.

She estimates that she worked an average of 45 hours per week. However, the minimum wage overtime lawsuit states that even though she had arrived to work at 10:30, and began to perform her work duties, her former employer, “instructed plaintiff and other servers not to clock into to work until their first table arrived.”

Additionally, her minimum wage overtime lawsuit states that “ on occasion, if plaintiff’s recorded time was close to 40 hours for the week, the defendant required plaintiff to clock out, but continue working to finish her duties, so that there would not be a record of her having worked overtime for the week.”

Cheryl does not recall ever being paid overtime, but states that on numerous occasions she worked more than 40 hours in a week. She was also paid an hourly rate of $2.13 per hour plus tips.

According to the minimum wage overtime lawsuit, the defendant never followed the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and allowed her to be paid less than the full minimum wage amount under the law.

She was also not permitted to retain all her tips. She was required to pay 2.25% of her gross sales receipts to her employer, which she had allegedly been told was being paid to the bussers “under a tip sharing arrangement.”

She was also required to pay 4.0% of her gross alcohol sales to Boathouse, which was supposed to be shared with the bartenders that she was working with under another tip sharing arrangement.

However, the minimum wage overtime lawsuit contends that no tips were paid to the bussers and no tips were shared with the bartenders. According to the minimum wage overtime lawsuit, the plaintiff “believes that the 2.25% of gross sales that were withheld from her tips each night to pay to the bussers were retained by defendants.”

The Minimum Wage Overtime Lawsuit is Case No. 1:17-cv-00427-TLS-SLC, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.

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