Lan Garden 88 Failed to Pay Tipped, Chef Employees Proper Wages, Lawsuit Claims

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Lan Garden Restaurant and Bar Inc., which runs the Lan Garden 88 Chinese restaurant in Ridgefield, New Jersey, and its owners/operators are wrapped up in a proposed collective and class action case alleging tipped employees were not paid proper wages. One plaintiff, a former chef, alleges that from between January and September 2015, he was paid a fixed monthly salary of $3,500 regardless of the number of hours he worked. The plaintiff also claims he was never given an uninterrupted break on any work day.

The other plaintiff, a former waiter/delivery person who worked at Lan Garden 88 in April 2015 and then from October 2016 through January 2017, claims he too made a fixed monthly salary of $3,500 that “was designed to vary with the amount of tips [the plaintiff] would earn each month.” The case claims the defendants capped how much the man could earn each month and paid him the difference between his tips and his $3,500 base salary. From the suit:

Further still, the lawsuit alleges the defendants failed to pay tipped workers at the appropriate minimum wage rate since the workers were required to participate in a tip pool with non-tipped employees in addition to having a tip credit taken on their pay, a practice that allegedly violates Fair Labor Standards Act regulations.

According to the second plaintiff, the defendants employed a practice of retaining three percent from the tips employees made on credit card transactions, and were “frequently late for as long as one-and-a-half months” on paying wages.