By now, you might have seen a headline with the words lawsuit and Hooters occupying the same title. If you didn’t bother to read on, you might have made an assumption that someone probably touched someone inappropriately and voila, a lawsuit appeared. Well, that’s not what happened and because the lawsuit initiated in California, it’s probably no surprise that it has to do with wage and hour violations.
The girls in the orange shorts who serve saucy wings are suing certain California Hooters restaurants for having to buy their own uniforms, lack of legally mandated breaks/meals period and not recieving tips. The lawsuits also go on to mention that the Hooter girls worked special events without being sufficiently compensated.
Though the legal action is not in the form of a state wide class action lawsuit, lawsuits have been popping up all over California that claim similar offenses. Interestingly enough, the lawsuit does not come without a counter argument as the owners of the select California Hooters restaurants claim that they purchased two sets of uniforms for the workers. The owners also indicate that additional uniforms are were available for purchase for convenience purposes or perhaps a result of weighty issues (now that’s hitting below the orange belt) . Unfortunately for the owners of the select restaurants, California law indicates that businesses who require uniforms must pay for them.
Up to this point, we had heard of wage and hour violations within industries such as retail, IT and grocery. Who would have thought wage and hour issues would hit the delightfully tacky yet unrefined restaurant chain. I mean how harmful can an orange clad, tight shorts wearing, cleavage showing waitress really be? The answer is extremely! Especially when it comes to labor laws and not just the ones here in California. One can say that Hooters has gotten themselves in a real pickle and the not the good, fried kind that they serve in their establishments but that’s for another blog at another time.
In a time when worker misclassification and wage and hour lawsuits run rampant through the headlines, how could Hooters not pay attention to what was going on around them? Whatever the reason is, I’m going to chalk it up to the “It will never happen to us” philosophy. This is goes to show you that no industry is exempt from the labor accusations that Hooters faces today. Stay tuned for more information.
