It’s getting hot in the kitchen. And expensive. While the boom in wage-and-hour litigation certainly has not confined itself to any particular industry, restaurants have increasingly found themselves well-represented on the defendant side of the caption. The U.S. Department of Labor and private litigants continued to target the industry in 2012, and the trend appears to be gaining momentum. The Labor Department has taken the position that low-wage employees, like many in the restaurant industry, are particularly vulnerable to unlawful wage-and-hour practices and has classified restaurants as a "high-risk industry" for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Labor Department is not all talk, either. Targeted enforcement initiatives to investigate whether restaurants are complying with the FLSA’s overtime and minimum-wage provisions have been implemented across the country e.g., Massachusetts restaurants, Release No. 12-445-BOS/BOS 2012-051; Georgia restaurants, Release No. 11-1357-ATL (506); Illinois restaurants, Release No. 11-24-CHI; Utah restaurants, Release No. 10-209-DEN; Los Angeles-area restaurants, Release No. 12-407-SAN (SF-73), etc.
These enforcement initiatives have borne fruit. The Labor Department’s Wage-and-Hour Division reported having collected more than $225 million in back pay for FLSA violations in all industries for fiscal year 2011, restaurants representing about 10 percent of that total. Restaurants can expect more of the same attention in 2013: The division requested an additional $10 million in funding for fiscal year 2013 to pursue "a continued shift to greater directed and complaint activity in priority industries." Think a "high-risk industry" might also find itself a "priority industry" in the department’s enforcement scheme? So do we.
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