An IHOP franchisee restaurant on Staten Island, New York will pay $40,000 to a former assistant manager to settle a lawsuit for unpaid overtime wages. The assistant manager claimed that IHOP failed to pay her overtime wages for hours worked over forty per workweek. This lawsuit continues a recent trend of restaurant workers alleging misclassification as Assistant Managers so they would be “exempt” from the FLSA requirement to receive overtime pay at time and a half for hours worked over forty in a workweek.
Only a limited number of employees in restaurants are “exempt” from the requirement of overtime pay under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the New York Labor Law (NYLL). In order to qualify as an “exempt” under these laws, a restaurant worker has to fit within the administrative, executive, or professional exemption. So, if a restaurant is paying a cook, maître’d, bookkeeper, host, or other non-management employee a salary for a workweek in excess of 40 hours, it is unlawfully failing to pay the employee overtime — regardless of how much the employee is paid.
The assistant manager was represented by Gianfranco Cuadra, an attorney at Pechman Law Group. Congratulations to Franco on a successful litigation and negotiation of an excellent settlement.
