Pedro's Bar and Restaurant Hit with Multiple FLSA Allegations

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Pedro’s Bar & Restaurant, Inc. and an individual owner are facing claims that they violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and New York state law. The plaintiff, who worked for the defendants as a waitress, says she and other employees were compensated only in tips and were not given an hourly wage. They were often required to arrive at the restaurant before it opened and stay after it closed in order to clean and make other necessary preparations, according to the complaint. Since the employees were paid in tips, they were uncompensated for these hours during which customers were not present, the suit argues.

The plaintiff further claims that the defendants made unlawful deductions from her tips when customers failed to pay their bills, drinks were spilled and replaced, or there were cash register shortages. She says she was required to share her tips with kitchen staff and other non-tipped employees and that, as a result, the amount of compensation reported by the defendants to the IRS included money she never received. This misreporting caused proposed class members to unfairly suffer “increased tax liability,” the suit argues.

The complaint also claims that employees did not receive required wage notices and statements. “In fact,” the suit alleges, “Plaintiff and [NYLL proposed class members] largely did not receive any paycheck at all given that they were compensated nearly entirely through tips and therefore they received virtually no details regarding their compensation.”