Numerous class action wage lawsuits by servers against restaurants could have been thrown out or hobbled if Gov. Ned Lamont had signed Connecticut House Bill 5001.

That is the consensus among both supporters and opponents of the bill, who now say they are watching closely, as the governor—who last month vetoed the proposed legislation—might be amenable to a workaround that affects how servers are paid.

“The governor is currently working with legislative leadership on crafting a compromise bill,” Lamont’s spokesperson David Bednarz said Wednesday. “Those discussions are ongoing.”

New Haven Legal Assistance Association attorney James Bhandary-Alexander opposed House Bill 5001, which he said sought to “get rid of the lawsuits.”

“What the bill was aimed at doing was eviscerating all claims that anyone had or could have had under the law, including all class action claims and all individual claims,” he said.

At issue is Section 7 of the bill, which, would have wiped out Sections 31-62-E4 within Chapter 54 of the Connecticut General Statutes—a roughly five-decades-old provision that requires segregation of servers’ service duties and the non-service tasks, which involve cleaning bathrooms and any other work not related to direct face-to-face contact with diners. It then requires employers to pay accordingly, using the state’s minimum wage $10.10 an hour for nonservice tasks rather than the $6.38 minimum for service duties.

There are at least seven class action lawsuits pending against Connecticut restaurants, alleging the companies did not segregate service duties and nonservice duties. The lawsuits, all involving Hartford-based employment attorney Richard Hayber, allege the restaurants underpaid servers for chores like removing garbage, stocking and sweeping.

Hayber, principal of Hayber Law Firm, said Wednesday that if Lamont had signed the bill, “in short, it would have meant that restaurants could have paid the tip rate for non-tipped work, and gotten away with it.”

Scott Dolch, executive director of the 1,200-member Connecticut Restaurant Association, suggested his members aren’t looking to underpay their staff. Instead, he said they’ve adhered to the federal 80/20 rule, which allows for 80% of a server’s time to be spent attending customers and up to 20% allotted to other duties. The state Department of Labor states on its website that it will not penalize restaurants who follow the 80/20 rule and don’t offer two pay rates, although that doesn’t mean private actions can’t be filed.

Dolch said the current law on segregating job responsibilities is cumbersome and confusing.

“Clocking in and clocking out for performing service duties and non-service duties is burdensome,” he said. “It could mean clocking in and out 30 times a day because you can have multiple tables, and there is side work to be done. It’s just so confusing and literally impossible for a restaurant to manage the process as it’s written now.”

Dolch said the current law leaves businesses vulnerable to litigation.

“It’s opening our industry up for more and more lawsuits,” he said. “To be sued, or potentially sued. for doing what is done in other states is just not right.”

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