Restaurateurs: Finding Wage and Hour Confusing?
Posted on 14-Dec-09 by The Timekeeper
OK, so wage and hour is confusing for pretty much everybody, I grant you. But for restaurants, it’s often especially so, what with having to deal with tips and all the special pay rules related thereto, tricky employee classification questions (i.e. when is a “manager” not a manager?), often irregular work schedules, and a host of other issues many other types of businesses rarely face.
Plus, as a low-wage industry, the hospitality biz is under some measure of scrutiny at both the state and federal levels, so indiscretions and mistakes often come to light more often and more readily than in other industries.
Right on the heels of a story about five restaurants in the Houston area being assessed over $330,000 in back wages for failing to pay employees properly for overtime, and another about 17 KFC restaurants in Iowa having to pay nearly $150,000 in back wages for similar issues…
…comes some possible help. Yay! 
The Cornell University School of Hotel Administration Center for Hospitality Research has issued the latest in a series of “Roundtable Retrospectives” which could prove to be a useful resource for those in the restaurant business.
The authors of Restaurants at the Crossroads: A State-by-State Summary of Key Wage-and-Hour Provisions have compiled a guide to wage and hour rules in all fifty states, as well as areas such as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
Of course, when it comes to making sure you’re on the right side of wage and hour law, nothing beats a good long heart-to-heart with your employment law attorney — and I strongly encourage you to have one (soon) if you haven’t recently. But this guide could be a good starting point to help you identify potential issues you might want to bring up when next you and your attorney meet and to help you stay out of hot water in the meantime.
Good stuff.
Related Posts
No Comments
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
