NYC Japanese Restaurant To Pay Waitstaff $1.25M for Wage Violations

Five New York City locations of the East Japanese Restaurant have agreed to pay ­$1.25 million dollars to approximately 225 current and former waiters, runners, and bussers to settle a wage and hour lawsuit that alleged tip credit, minimum wage, overtime, and other federal and New York Labor Law wage violations. The Complaint against the East Japanese Restaurants alleged that the restaurants unlawfully took a tip credit and failed to pay their workers the proper minimum wage, overtime for hours worked over forty in a workweek, and spread-of-hours pay when the servers worked more than ten hours in a day.  Attorneys for the employees also claimed that the restaurants deducted money from their employees’ pay for breakage, customer walkouts, mistakes, and uniform related expenses. The East Japanese Restaurants settlement was approved by federal court Judge Louis L. Stanton on July 5, 2012.