A former employee has filed a class action lawsuit against Camping World Inc., citing alleged unpaid wages and violation of Workers' Compensation acts.
The parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster and other chain restaurant brands has won a legal victory after a federal appeals panel refused to certify a class action over unpaid vacation time, saying the restaurant group’s change to its “anniversary pay” policies shouldn't subject it to a class action lawsuit.
A little over a year since a group of several hundred assistant bank branch managers sued PNC Bank for allegedly denying them overtime pay, a federal judge in Chicago has signed off on a deal to end the litigation for $6 million, which would send around $2,000 on average to each of the allegedly wronged assistant managers and $2 million to the attorneys who brought the case.
Despite a federal appeals court's recent ruling that restaurants aren’t necessarily breaking federal labor law by requiring tipped servers to perform tasks other than waiting tables, a Chicago federal judge has decided to allow servers at several suburban Buffalo Wild Wings franchise locations to sue their employers for that same reason.
A suburban Chicago chain of pancake houses has stacked another win in its ongoing legal fight with former servers who claimed they weren’t paid enough for work they did in addition to waiting tables at the restaurants.
Visionworks’ buy one, get one free offer on eyeglasses has bought it a new federal class action complaint, alleging the retailer marks up the price of the first pair, making the second one cost much more than "free."
DirecTV and its installation contractors will need to continue to defend itself against a pair of lawsuits brought in Chicago federal court by service technicians who claimed the satellite television provider owes them unpaid overtime.
Servers and other tipped restaurant workers have sued P.F. Chang’s in federal court, claiming the casual Asian restaurant chain didn’t pay them what was required by wage laws.
Two Chicago area women have dished out a potential wage-and-hour class action lawsuit against restaurant chain TGI Friday’s, alleging their former employer maintained a vacation pay policy that violated Illinois law, and did not properly pay employees who quit or were fired for the vacation time they had accumulated while they worked at the restaurants.
As the calendar moves into 2016 and beyond, the hospitality industry could see a growing shift among restaurants to no-tipping policies, should restaurateurs across the country see many happy returns for the handful of dining establishments that have already eliminated tipping – and see whether the change might help delete lawsuits over the treatment of tipped employees from the country’s litigation menu.
The increase of wage and hour lawsuits being filed in Chicago federal courts in the last 25 years is reflective of a national trend. And with two new notifications from the U.S. Department of Labor regarding revised Fair Labor Standards Act regulations and an updated interpretation of worker classification, area litigators not only expect to see FLSA suits on the rise again, but to see businesses overhaul their structures.
Amid the rising tide of wage and overtime lawsuits brought in the last 25 years under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, employers of all sizes have faced a series of questions. Foremost for many, however, is the question of how to classify their workers. As the economy has shifted, many have attempted to turn to the use of so-called independent contractors, raising concerns and litigation over whether those contractors are independent enough to pass legal muster.
This is the first installment in a series examining labor litigation brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act. In Chicago and nationwide, the number of wage and hour lawsuits filed under the FLSA has been steadily on the rise for most of the past 25 years. And area lawyers expect to see yet another spike in litigation as employers and employees alike see what will come of further changes to the rules governing enforcement of the FLSA by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Jimmy John’s, a popular Illinois-based chain of sandwich shops, now faces multiple class action lawsuits over its treatment of assistant managers at its hundreds of restaurants across the country. And each of those class actions will be litigated in Chicago’s federal court.
