LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The 442-restaurant Bob Evans chain likes to say its founder believed in “treating strangers like friends and friends like family.” And it says those principles are still alive today at every one of its restaurants.
But they apparently don’t apply to its sub-minimum wage servers, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, about 20 miles southwest of the company's headquarters.
The complaint accuses the chain of violating state and federal minimum wage laws by paying servers in Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee so little their work amounted to "forced labor."
Though the law allows restaurants to pay servers who receive gratuities less than the $7.25 minimum wage, the exception only applies to work that generates tips, such as serving food, or activities that support it, like setting tables or refilling condiments.
In a 23-page lawsuit, filed as a potential class action on behalf of servers in Louisville, Lexington, Elizabethtown, Nicholasville and Somerset, Kentucky, as well as in Clarksville and New Albany, Indiana, the plaintiffs say Bob Evans illegally paid them less than the minimum wage for such work as cleaning bathrooms and making biscuits — which don’t generate tips and aren’t exempt from the minimum wage.
The suit also accuses Bob Evans of breaking the law by paying minimum wage for tip-supporting work — such as rolling silverware into napkins — that lasted more than 30 minutes at a time or took up more than 20% of their...
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