Four former workers at Terrance Brennan’s fromage-centric restaurant Artisanal, have filed a lawsuit against the chef for allegedly violating labor laws by distributing tips to employees that were ineligible for such compensation. The lawsuits states that the Maitre d’s and cheese counter employees, who work on an hourly wage system, received cuts of the tips which should have gone to servers, bus boys, runners and the like.
Says a rep for the workers: This case challenges Mr. Brennan’s inexplicable decision to continue enforcing his tip policies well after employees at Artisanal questioned them. We believe that Mr. Brennan was not genuinely interested in sensibly resolving the issues.
This is, of course, just another of such labor lawsuits that have been aired out recently as you may recall, Bobby Flay was recently slapped with similar charges and settled out of court, and last June, a similar wage-pooling suit was filed against the owners of East Village Italian spot, Frank. In case you were wondering, this lawsuit pertains to the Brennan restaurant that’s still French, not Spanish.