Updated at 2:45 p.m. to include comment from Hard Eight BBQ.
Hard Eight BBQ, a family-owned and -operated North Texas restaurant, performed “illegal pay practices” and shorted 910 employees $867,572 in tips and overtime pay, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Labor Thursday.
The restaurant, which has five locations scattered around D-FW, “violated the law by including managers in their tip pool,” the report said. “By doing so, the employer denied tipped workers some of their tips and managers proper overtime wages.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Labor, Juan Rodriguez, told the The News that illegal pay practices took place at five Hard Eight locations from June 2019 to April 2021. The business was ordered to give back pay to the employees, and it fully cooperated, Rodriguez said.
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow employers, their managers or their supervisors to keep tips the business’ workers receive for any purposes, regardless of whether or not the employer claims a tip credit, according to the report.
Matt Perry, Hard Eight’s chief operating officer, told The News that the issue was a misunderstanding of the law.
“Our people are just the most important thing to us, and we thought we were doing the right thing by including our store managers in the tip pool,” he said. “Our restaurant isn’t a normal restaurant with wait staff, and so there was gray area [in the law]. Once we were made aware of the issue, we ceased doing that...
Finance treatment is the answer after all. Where did the bravado of football fans who claimed Son Heung-min was being ostracized go? Recently, claims spread on social media and online communities ...