What to do, if anything, if I suspect management is messing with us?

October 29, 2008 11:30 AM

Do I have any rights as an employee who sees other employees being treated unfairly? I live and work in Michigan at a bar/restaurant, but have worked in HR and payroll, and am astonished at the things I see and hear.

I work for a small, mom-and-pop type Irish pub in a Detroit suburb. There are only about 15 employees, between cooks, waitresses and bartenders, and we're a pretty tight group, mostly banding together over how much our jobs suck.

I'm a server and occasionally bartend, and found out that the bartenders get paid $2.65 an hour, which is server minimum wage. I have never worked in a bar where the bartenders get paid the same amount as the servers, but I digress. I'm mostly concerned about the cooks. They work off a 10-page menu, get paid $7/hour, and most them have never gotten a raise despite working there for roughly 2 years. We all have terrible jobs, it's a disgusting place and we constantly are being grossed out by the things we have to do (not health department violation gross, just in general). We all get bullied by management and it's family-owned and operated, so us non-relatives are treated like we are completely unnecessary and replaceable, which, while the latter is true, seems a little over-the-top. They don't do anything for us but expect us to go leaps and bounds for them, when we obviously don't matter to them.

So the cooks already get paid shit, work long shifts (10 hours) and since they have a hard time finding people to work for peanuts, it's just a few of them who rotate all the shifts. The cooks inevitably get overtime hours, although the owners/managers make the employee who caused the other employee to get overtime, to pay it. (Hopefully that makes sense.) If Cook X needed Cook Y to stay over and help him close up that night, Cook X would have to pay Cook Y's overtime.

My belief is that this is illegal. It also seems illegal for them to be doctoring the cook's timesheets so that they're punching in for say, 45.67 hours and getting checks for 38.00 hours. The odds of getting an exact hour amount are pretty low, especially a few times in a row that I've heard of it happening.

I don't want to rock any boats and I don't need to lose my job, but I'm pretty sure we're all getting bent over by some extremely poor management. I also found out today that my $18 paycheck BOUNCED.

Can I contact the Wage and Labor Division through the state of MI about this? Have you ever done anything like this? Or should I just shut my mouth and be happy to have a job?

posted by slyboots421 to work & money (15 comments total)

I'm not a Michigan attorney, but I would say that unless your wage and hour rights are being violated, you should likely keep this to yourself. I've filed some things with the federal DOL, and it usually doesn't amount to much.

I'd say that everyone has a choice in where they work, and it could be that the cooks don't mind the conditions because things are much worse at most other places in town.
posted by reenum at 11:40 AM on October 29, 2008

To echo reenum, it may seem bad, but these cooks are putting up with it. You could say to them something like "Dude, I've worked in a lot of bars and I've NEVER heard of cooks being paid so low/having to pay the other one's overtime/whatever. If I were you, I'd look into the legality of it."
posted by k8t at 11:52 AM on October 29, 2008

I also found out today that my $18 paycheck BOUNCED.

They can't make payroll? Looks like you should start finding a new job already. I guess you probably get most of your earnings from tips, but still.

I would not contact the labor authorities. You should leave it to the aggrieved cooks to do that. They may be ignorant (in which case you can tell them), or they may have their own reasons not to get the authorities involved.
posted by grouse at 11:57 AM on October 29, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I agree with you guys so far about it being the cooks' responsibility. They've told me about their money/overtime situations, etc. and I always tell them to keep their time slips that print out when they punch out every day. I know they're too lazy to ever pursue things themselves, so that's probably why it happens so often. I just wondered if anyone knew of a way to make "anonymous" complaints. I don't want to get all involved in everyones' stuff, but I feel like we're all taken advantage of. I have no idea what else to do, besides looking for another job (which I'm doing right now!).
posted by slyboots421 at 12:02 PM on October 29, 2008

Restaurants and bars seem to be rather notorious for treating employees badly.

Voice of caution: checks are returned by banks for many reasons (errors, typos, mistakes) and it did not necessarily bounce because the account did not have 18.00 in it.

Even if it did, most businesses have more than one bank account, so that could be a sign of poor accounting/management more than flat-brokeness.

So don't start stealing furniture to sell on eBay just yet.
posted by rokusan at 12:06 PM on October 29, 2008

Is it possible that the cooks are illegal aliens? That's very common in the restaurant industry, and they might put up with this shit because they fear the throwdown if they don't.
posted by granted at 12:48 PM on October 29, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Slyboots, you'll need a cook to file a complaint on their own behalf. You can notify the DOL but if noone from the kitchen stands up when asked, they can't really do anything.
posted by scabrous at 12:49 PM on October 29, 2008

IANAL, but I am a Michigan resident who once worked at a company that practiced what I perceived at the time to be unfair employment practices. I did not work in food service, and I know that some of their regulations vary from those of standard 9-to-5 industries, but it might still be worthwhile to take a look at the Michigan Department of Labor website and contact someone in Employment Relations as a start.

In my particular case, I worked at a smallish steel service center. The boss/owner of the company had a very strange dividing line of exempt/non-exempt employees: the men in the office (no matter what their job description) were exempt, and therefore got paid a flat-rate salary no matter how many hours worked. This meant that they did not get time and a half for hours over 40 in a week, but it also meant that they were not limited to any amount of "sick days" or "personal time off" and got paid when they were absent. The women in the office (again, no matter what the job title) were all non-exempt and were eligible for overtime pay. HOWEVER, the owner discouraged us from working more than 40 hours, and when it became a necessity (for example, if I was the only person left in the office who knew how to prepare a bill of lading for a trucker who'd arrived after hours), he instead gave us comparable time off instead of paying time and a half. That is, if I stayed two hours after my normal work day to process the truck out, I received my regular rate of pay but was given two "banked" hours of paid time, should I need to leave early for an appointment or some such. However, if I happened to get a serious illness and missed more than three days of work in a year, I was not paid for any of that additional time off unless I had "banked" hours. (Again, this did not apply to the males in the office.) I investigated this type of corporate practice, and found out that the State of Michigan was very interested in companies who used the "banking" of hours versus paying time and a half, as per state law. The state's concern is not altruistic; they're just concerned that they're missing out on the increased amount of payroll tax that would be withheld if employees were paid the mandated time and a half.

I anonymously reported this company after I left (yeah, I was chicken and didn't want to "rock the boat" while I still worked there). I had sort of mentioned to the owner during a conference (after I'd been docked for the two days I'd been home with a case of periocarditis) that I believed it was illegal to compensate employees differently based stricly on gender, and his response was "Yeah, but what are you gonna do? Men don't call in sick as much as women." After that conversation I didn't feel badly at all that the company was eventually investigated by the State and billed for uncollected back payroll taxes.
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:00 PM on October 29, 2008

Adecdotefilter: A friend of mine once worked as a server/bartender at a local, family-owned restaurant that engaged in similar paycheck shenanigans. I don't remember all of the details of whys and hows, but she said that most weeks she never got a paycheck for her meager hourly wage, because her wages had been docked for whatever stupid reason (I think covering the tab for tables that ate and ran was one of them). She made good money off of tips, and just put up with the crap for a couple of years. Then several years after she'd stopped working there, she got a hefty check in the mail for all her missing wages that had been lost over the years. I don't know who filed a complaint with which Department, whether there was a judgement on the case or if the restaurant agreed to a settlement, but my point is that pervasive labor violations can work their way through the system to the worker's favor if you make enough noise. (This was in Virginia.)

Caveat: the family that owned her restaurant also owned one or two others in town, one of which was a strip club. And as you know, strip clubs attract the attention of government authorities with much more enthusiasm than other businesses. How this factored into the case against them, I don't know, but it probably played a part.
posted by junkbox at 1:04 PM on October 29, 2008

See if you are protected by any whistleblower laws. We have one in CA that protects employees against retaliation for reporting an employer's violations of State or Federal statute.

Protection against retaliation doesn't mean you wont be retaliated against, but I believe it does create a legal recourse for you if they hassle you.

The bigger question may be if it is worth it. You could probably do better. Sounds like a kitchen nightmare.
posted by quarterframer at 1:13 PM on October 29, 2008

When I was in Texas, it was illegal for an employer to take anything out of wages that you have not agreed to in writing. Thus when my employer there took several hundred dollars out of my check because of a co-worker's bad judgement call, I filed a complaint. Whatever the official agency was looked over my written statement, his written statement, and held a hearing of sorts over the phone. They did not attempt to hide the fact that they were trying to keep money back against my wishes and w/o a written or verbal agreement, so I got it back plus state unemployment insurance for having left an intolerable work environment (which my boss had to pay for somehow--still fuzzy on how that worked).

So ask at appropriate people there. If there is no written agreement about docking wages and there is a paper trail of deductions, it may be easy to get the money back at the end of a cook's term of employment.
posted by K.P. at 1:43 PM on October 29, 2008

What you describe is indeed illegal, but how much luck you're going to have getting it resolved is questionable. Not to discourage you from reporting it, but have realistic expectations. Odds are what will happen, if anything, is that the owners will get smacked down in some way but there will be little to no compensation for the employees.

It's always possible that they could be smacked down in such a way that they decide to close up shop. I personally wouldn't consider that a net loss, but you should consider whether the other people working there might think so.

The best comeuppance is going to be the one they're already suffering: difficulty staffing, which will inevitably negatively impact their bottom line. I may be a bigger hardass than most, but I'd suggest you look out for yourself here and question why you would want to continue to work for a crappy place like that. To be perfectly blunt, I find it hard to believe it's too difficult for you to find a an equivalent server job elsewhere.
posted by phearlez at 2:33 PM on October 29, 2008

If you feel like you're being taken advantage of, find a new job. Everyone else there has made their decision.

If the staff are illegal immigrants (as a lot of kitchen staff is where I live) or have some other questionable status they don't want you to talk to any legal authority. At very best they'll lose their jobs. Sometimes places can get pretty dodgy. And owner can agree to pay someone under the table so they can both avoid taxes, or whatever.

In that case, sure it's illegal, and should theoretically be reported. But you could be costing those people their jobs. And the jobs of everyone who works there including you if the place gets closed down. Your decision if this is a good thing or not. I don't think anyone there would be too friendly to you after that.
posted by Ookseer at 6:16 PM on October 29, 2008

I think the paying for fewer hours than worked, for an hourly employee, is likely to be illegal. Having one employee pay another's wages also sounds likely to be illegal.

But paying cooks an hourly wage, even a low one, is not illegal. Cooks don't usually share in tips and usually get an hourly wage, regardless of how busy they are, rather than a service wage + tips. I've worked in four restaurants and it was never the case that cooks shared in tips or that servers got the same hourly wages as cooks. They are different wage structures and have almost nothing in common.

This all depends on your state labor law.

If you're unhappy, I agree with those who say: find another job.
posted by Miko at 7:58 PM on October 29, 2008

The controlling authority is the Wage & Hour division of Michigan's Department of Labor & Economic Growth.


IANAL, etc.

From what I can see on their site, state law requires that any deductions be made with the un-coerced consent of the employee. So it would seem that the forced payment of co-worker's overtime isn't legal if the cooks are being intimidated into accepting it. On the other hand, if it was in their hiring agreement they're probably out of luck. And if someone questioned the deduction, the owners could pay them the full amount to avoid an actual violation--and then fire them. A wrongful termination suit would be pretty unlikely, given the resources typically available to people working at that level, and even if filed would not necessarily succeed.

The same rule regarding deductions would apply to disallowing time recorded on the timesheet--supposing that those are in fact acknowledged deductions and not straight-out fraud.

But, as other's have said the restaurant business is murky and if nothing else you should find out if there are any shadowy agreements or legal statuses that might account for the cooks accepting the situation before you raise a stink.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:45 AM on October 30, 2008