Landry's Seafood Restaurants Inc. has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a class action lawsuit against the Chart House restaurant in Boston. The lawsuit alleges that ChartHouse unlawfully failed to pay its servers minimum wages and misappropriated tips, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), the Massachusetts Tip Act (“MTA”), and the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Act (“MMWA”).The settlement agreement covers a class of about 250 employees who worked as servers at Chart House’s Boston location.
The restaurant workers’ lawsuit alleged that the upscale seafood restaurant’s tip sharing program, which required servers to remit a portion of their tips to hosts and hostesses, unlawfully deprived servers of their tips in violation of the MTA. According to the lawsuit, hosts and hostesses at the Chart House were not entitled to share gratuities with the restaurant’s waitstaff because they did not provide direct guest service such as serving food and beverages or clearing customers’ tables. As a result of the restaurant’s tip-sharing policy, the workers claim that Chart House failed to pay them minimum wages because it improperly applied the “tip credit”against the wages paid, in violation of the FLSA and the MMWA.The restaurant workers sought to recover compensation for themselves and all other wait staff employees who did not receive all the gratuities to which they were entitled as well as unpaid minimum wages, statutory damages and attorneys’ fees.
In August 2018, United States Magistrate Judge Allison D. Burroughs preliminarily approved the parties’ settlement, under which Chart House will pay back wages to all individuals who worked as servers at Chart House restaurant in Boston and who remitted any portion of their tips to hosts through the restaurant’s tip sharing program.
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