Prepare for a real shock! -snicker-

[ashling]

Gordon Ramsay Sued Over Unpaid Wages By Employees At His Fat Cow Restaurant

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/15/gordon-ramsay-sued_n_3447604.html


Prepare for a shocker. Gordon Ramsay is being sued for mistreating his employees.

Radar online is reporting that the celebrity chef known for hosting FOX reality TV shows "Kitchen Nightmares" and "Hell’s Kitchen" is facing a class action lawsuit brought by employees of his Los Angeles restaurant The Fat Cow. The lawsuit doesn't involve the frank and at times verbally abusive outbursts that have made Ramsay famous, however. Rather, Ramsay faces allegations of a managerial nature, The Daily Mail points out.

The Fat Cow former and current employees Jennifer Becerra, Montinique Dever, Andrea Bourke and Lauren Benge said they were not properly compensated for overtime hours, and also were forced to work through meal times and other breaks.

[Chan790]

1. This is increasingly common in the restaurant industry.

It's not just Ramsey...pretty much every high-end eatery and celebrity chef has faced this type of lawsuit in recent years.

Fundamentally, there is a change occurring in the high-end restaurant industry as professionally-educated middle-class degree-holders who've been in the restaurant industry for 5, 10, 15 years (my brother among them) are deciding that it's no longer "what they're doing" but a career; they've begun to agitate for better wages, working conditions, organize, activists (most notably Saru Jayaraman, author of Behind the Kitchen Door and co-founder of Restaurant Opportunities Council-United) have begun to use media to draw attention to the treatment of restaurant workers and labor lawyers are beginning to pursue litigation to advance better working conditions. (Better protections of legally-mandated break times, a rise in the servers minimum-wage, overtime compensation, tip protection(not so much a high-end restaurant concern as fast-casual restaurants. Places like Starbucks have faced litigation over how tips are handled...specifically that Starbucks (and most of the sector) was splitting managers and shift-supervisors into the tip distribution as they were working the service line and serving customers.))

I like Ramsey, he's one of my culinary heroes...but I stand behind restaurant labor.