By Daniel Wiessner<\/p>\n
Oct 23 (Reuters) – A lawsuit filed on Friday involving the pay practices of Chili’s operator Brinker International is seeking to strike down New York state’s lower minimum wage for \u200cworkers who earn tips, which it claims fuels the sexual and racial harassment of workers.<\/p>\n
The \u200cproposed class action in federal court in Brooklyn by three former Chili’s employees claims that New York’s policy, which most other US states \u200bshare, allows Brinker to force employees to rely on tips and exposes them to unlawful discrimination.<\/p>\n
“Brinker promotes a culture in which tipped service employees make customers ‘feel special,’ even at the expense of their dignity and safety,” the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n
Brinker did not respond to a request for comment. The New York Attorney General’s office did not immediately \u200crespond to a request for comment on \u2060the challenge to the state law.<\/p>\n
Many worker advocates have for years called for the elimination of sub-minimum wages that companies may pay to workers who earn tips under \u2060federal and most state laws, as long as tips make up the difference.<\/p>\n
In New York, where the minimum wage is $16 an hour or $17 in and around New York City, food service workers who earn tips may be paid $10.70 or $11.35 \u200ban hour. \u200bThe federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour, compared \u200bwith the traditional minimum wage of $7.25, and applies \u200cin states that do not set their own minimums.<\/p>\n
RELYING ON TIPS<\/p>\n
Advocates say that because tips are discretionary and unpredictable, they should supplement workers’ incomes rather than make up most of their pay. The lawsuit against Brinker says that relying on tips forces workers to tolerate conduct such as sexual harassment and customers’ potential racial bias.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said in the lawsuit that they plan to expand the case to include a nationwide class \u200cof Chili’s workers.<\/p>\n
Brinker operates more than 1,200 Chili’s restaurants in \u200bthe US, including 36 in New York. The company also owns \u200bMaggiano’s Little Italy, an Italian restaurant chain \u200bwith about 50 US locations.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claims that Chili’s reliance on customer ratings to \u200cdetermine workers’ schedules, shifts and table assignments is \u200balso unlawful. The ratings system \u200bcan be racially biased, the lawsuit says, and can make it difficult for servers to reject unwanted advances from customers for fear of a poor rating.<\/p>\n
The named plaintiffs, three former employees at a \u200bChili’s in the Glendale section of \u200cQueens in New York City, claim they were routinely subjected to sexual advances and inappropriate comments \u200band that management did not adequately protect workers from harassment.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, \u200bNew York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Daniel Wiessner Oct 23 (Reuters) – A lawsuit filed on Friday involving the pay practices of Chili’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-381006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}