Il Fornaio, a California-based Italian restaurant chain, will pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over allegations of \u201congoing, continuous and severe\u201d sexual harassment of at least 100 female employees, many of whom were teenagers, the EEOC\u2019s Los Angeles District announced this month.<\/p>\n
The 2022 lawsuit charged the restaurant chain with creating a sexually hostile work environment for female employees and retaliating against those who reported it. Il Fornaio is headquartered in Corte Madera and operates 15 locations across California and Nevada.<\/p>\n
Supervisors and employees across multiple locations allegedly subjected female workers to repeated sexual harassment, including \u201cforceful groping in restaurant bathrooms, multiple instances of grabbing female employees\u2019 private parts, requests for sexual favors, and explicit references to sexual activities,\u201d the EEOC said. <\/p>\n
In one instance, a teenage employee at the restaurant\u2019s Palo Alto location told her managers she was raped by an older male employee, but was told that \u201cnothing could be done because the rape happened outside of work, even though the employee had experienced harassment at work for months prior,\u201d according to an amended complaint filed in 2024. <\/p>\n
The complaint says male employees at \u201call levels\u201d of the company helped create and maintain the hostile work environment, from the vice president of operations to managers, bartenders, line cooks, food runners and bussers. As a result, hundreds of women were affected, and many were compelled to resign.<\/p>\n
The conduct \u201cwent unchecked, was open and notorious, and was ratified by higher-level management, resulting in a revolving door of female workers who left due to the intolerable working conditions,\u201d the complaint says. <\/p>\n
Representatives for Il Fornaio denied the allegations and said in court documents there was \u201cno companywide pattern or practice of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIl Fornaio takes harassment seriously and will continue to do everything possible to prevent and eliminate harassment in the workplace against all workers,\u201d attorney Hope Case said in an email. \u201cThe company prides itself on fostering a positive working environment for its employees, which is reflected in the high number of long-term employees and low turnover rate for the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Case said the settlement is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing, but rather a means to \u201cavoid the burden, expense, and uncertainty of continued litigation.\u201d The company has increased its efforts to prevent and eliminate harassment and discrimination in the workplace, she said. <\/p>\n
The alleged conduct is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits a hostile workplace environment based on sex as well as retaliation against people who complain about sexual harassment, according to the EEOC.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit says numerous women complained to managers about sexual harassment, but that their complaints were often disregarded \u2014 \u201cleaving their female employees, many of them teenagers working their first jobs, to fend for themselves.\u201d <\/p>\n
By July 2020, the company had eliminated its Human Resources Department, the lawsuit says, leaving employees with no effective way to report harassment. Retaliatory actions included worsening harassment, intimidation, reduced hours and termination, the suit says.<\/p>\n
Many of the locations named in the case are in Southern California, including Pasadena, Manhattan Beach, Irvine, Newport Beach, Woodland Hills and Santa Monica, some of which have since closed. <\/p>\n
In Pasadena, female employees described \u201crampant sexual harassment\u201d from managers and staff, including a server rubbing his penis against a hostess\u2019s back and multiple instances of male employees grabbing women\u2019s butts and making graphic comments about their bodies and sex lives.<\/p>\n
In Irvine, a busser allegedly followed a female hostess into the women\u2019s bathroom, cornered her against a wall and groped her vagina. In Manhattan Beach, chefs and servers rubbed their bodies against women and made unwelcome sexual comments, the suit says.<\/p>\n
\u201cSexual harassment continues to be a widespread issue in the restaurant industry, and during this case, we learned of at least 100 women negatively affected by Il Fornaio\u2019s work environment,\u201d said Beatriz B. Andre, acting regional attorney for the EEOC\u2019s Los Angeles District, in a statement. \u201cThrough this settlement, we hope Il Fornaio will take meaningful steps to prevent sexual harassment and respond promptly and effectively when complaints arise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Il Fornaio began as a baking school in Italy in the 1970s. It opened its first retail bakeries in the U.S. in San Francisco and Beverly Hills in 1981, and its first restaurant in Corte Madera in 1987, according to its website. Create Restaurants Holdings, a Japanese restaurant and food service group, acquired the chain in October 2019.<\/p>\n
In addition to the $3 million in compensation, the settlement agreement also contains three years of company-wide workplace reforms, including maintaining a dedicated human resources function for each restaurant and hiring an external monitor to conduct audits and ensure Title VII compliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EEOC will continue to stamp out workplace sexual harassment wherever it occurs,\u201d said Christine Park-Gonzalez, director of the agency\u2019s Los Angeles District, in a statement, noting, \u201cwe are thankful to the women who came forward and courageously shared their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Il Fornaio, a California-based Italian restaurant chain, will pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit from the U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1436,1804,729,107987,108252,193976,48,52,51,5936,47,50,49,63,2747,193977,193978,1977,5675,193975,1557],"class_list":["post-500496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-case","tag-company","tag-complaint","tag-eeoc","tag-female-employee","tag-il-fornaio","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-location","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-manager","tag-multiple-instance","tag-old-male-employee","tag-pasadena","tag-settlement","tag-sexual-harassment-lawsuit","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}