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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsApplebee’s Is Trying To Limit Workers’ Ability to Sue the Company When Their Wages Are Stolen
Class action lawsuits are often the only way non-union workers can get the money owed to them by cheating bosses. (Anthony92931 / Wikimedia Commons)
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18031/applebees_workers_wage_theft
BY BRUCE VAIL TUESDAY, JUN 9, 2015, 12:17 PM
Workers in the restaurant industry are routinely the victims of wage theft. For workers without a union, suing the company is one of the few ways to recover those wages. But a legal fight led by the restaurant chain Applebees against the National Labor Relations Board is aiming to further limit workers ability to sue the company over disputes on the job.
The Rose Group, a Pennsylvania-based franchise operator of 56 Applebees restaurants in several states, is fighting a recent ruling by a labor board judge that the company violated the rights of its workers by forcing them to sign agreements not to sue, but instead to settle disputes in private arbitration. In an April 22 decision, Administrative Law Judge Susan A. Flynn found that Rose Group had engaged in an illegal unfair labor practice by forcing workers to sign a Dispute Resolution Program and Agreement that restricts their rights to join class action lawsuits against Applebees.
Rose Group attorney Thomas Lewis tells In These Times he is challenging the ruling before the full NLRB and, if he loses there, will take the case on to federal court. Were confident the court will support us against the NLRB, he says.
The ability of employees to file such suits is far from an obscure legal issue, according to Catherine Ruckelshaus, Senior Attorney of the National Employment Law Project. Wage theft violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act are rife in the franchise restaurant industry, she says, and class action lawsuits are often the only way non-union workers can get the money owed to them by cheating bosses.
FULL story at link.
BRUCE VAIL
Bruce Vail is a Baltimore-based freelance writer with decades of experience covering labor and business stories for newspapers, magazines and new media. He was a reporter for Bloomberg BNA's Daily Labor Report, covering collective bargaining issues in a wide range of industries, and a maritime industry reporter and editor for the Journal of Commerce, serving both in the newspaper's New York City headquarters and in the Washington, D.C. bureau.
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Applebee’s Is Trying To Limit Workers’ Ability to Sue the Company When Their Wages Are Stolen (Original Post)
Omaha Steve
Jun 2015
OP
ladjf
(17,320 posts)1. No more Apple-bee's for us. nt
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)2. I think I stepped in it once.
Funny, that sentence works on several levels. Hm.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)3. I'm pretty certain
that I've eaten TV dinners that are of better quality than what Applebee's serves.
kcr
(15,300 posts)4. Won't eat at Applebees. Thanks, OmahaSteve.
I'll be sure to let the know why.