Workers Accuse Connecticut Diner of Wage Theft

Hamden Town House Restaurant in Hamden, Connecticut has been sued for wage pay violations by workers, employed at the diner as dishwashers, busboys, prep cooks, and cooks. Attorneys for the workers claim the diner required the workers to work between 53 and 72 hours every week and paid them a salary which resulted in hourly pay rates as low as $3.14 per hour, well below the minimum wage. They also allege the diner never paid them any overtime premium for weekly hours worked over 40. The workers also claim they were not given rest breaks despite consistently working 11 or 12-hour shifts, and that they had to work as many as eight straight hours before they could take a lunch break. According to the lawsuit, the Connecticut diner paid the workers in cash, without any receipts or use of a time keeping system. The workers claim they were required to sign a book each week that inaccurately listed their hours and pay. The owners consistently either reduced the number of hours they worked, or falsely recorded their pay as higher than it really was. If they refused to sign off on the information in the book, they were paid nothing at all. Also, according to one worker, the owners periodically deducted approximately twenty dollars from his pay without explanation. Connecticut’s current minimum wage is $9.60 per hour. The tipped minimum wage is currently $6.38 per hour for tipped workers (or $8.23 per hour for bartenders). The Connecticut Department of Labor also requires employers to pay employees a rate of at least one and a half times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40. Further, employers in Connecticut must keep accurate wage records for all employees. Tipped workers in Connecticut must also sign weekly tip credit statements confirming that they are aware of the tipped minimum wage regulations in Connecticut and that they received a sufficient amount of payment via tips to be eligible for the tip credit. Pechman Law Group recently settled a wage payment case against Maine Fish Market in East Windsor, Connecticut for $750,000. In that case, the workers alleged that the restaurant failed to give its servers and bartenders tip credit statements as required by Connecticut law, required them to pay for breakages, customer walkouts, and uniforms, and took ten to fifteen percent of each servers’ tips on a daily basis to pay other employees’ wages.