Company Sued for Not Paying Bathroom Attendants

[JohnKleeb]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After taking on greedy mutual fund firms and lying Wall Street bankers, New York's crusading attorney general aims to clean up a different mess: unpaid restaurant bathroom attendants.



Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Thursday an investigation showed that attendants in upscale New York City restaurants were not receiving any wages and in fact were paying for the privilege of mining tips in bathrooms in exchange for providing toiletries and a hand towel.


Spitzer filed a $4 million lawsuit against Royal Flush, the city's main placement service for bathroom attendants. Company officials were unavailable to comment.


The complaint says Royal Flush required workers to pay a "lease fee" proportional to the tips collected during each shift, in which attendants hover near bathroom sinks to assist patrons and provide dispensers of after-shave lotion, cologne, mouthwash and other supplies.


"The idea of people working without wages and having to pay a fee to stand in a bathroom and wait for tips is unconscionable," Spitzer said. "The arrangement violated state labor law, and deprived people of the dignity of the minimum wage."


Spitzer has already dealt justice to mutual funds found to have overcharged ordinary investors by hundreds of millions of dollars, and helped forge a $1.4 billion settlement with Wall Street banks over fraudulent stock research.


In a settlement signed this week, the owners of Tavern on the Green restaurant agreed to hire 14 workers on a full-time basis and pay up to $175,000 to compensate attendants for minimum wage underpayments for the past five years.


Stupid greedy business owners.

[Spinzonner]

1. Our society shouldnt have to put up with this crap

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. True story about my sojourn into the bathroom at Tavern on the Green

This was years ago. So, here was I in the big city helping my friend fulfill her dream of eating at Tavern on the Green. We go into the bathroom and we noticed a bathroom attendant with a full stock of toiletry accessories on the counter. The women going into the bathrooms were your usual fan-fare of New York posh matrons but one apparently was a squatter. As she left the cubicle, the bathroom attendant went into the stall and shouted, "Would you all sit down on the seat properly!" Actually, I think what she said was more vulgar than that, but we're in mixed company here.

[Xithras]

3. Don't they work as independent contractors?

If so, they're exempt from minimum wage laws because they aren't technically employed by the companies. The idea is that these guys are businesses unto themselves that the companies simply allow to come in and provide a service to their employees. If no employer/employee relationship exists, then no minimum wage laws apply.

FYI, there was a similar situation at a restaraunt near my home a couple of years ago. They had a few people coming in to act as attendants in the bathrooms, and a couple of them later sued claiming that they were employees. They won, but the restaraunt simply laid them all off afterwards. The restaraunt owners said they were willing to allow third party contractors to come in and provide the services to their customers, but that they weren't willing to fund those services themselves.