East Wingers Hit with Ex-Employees' Unpaid Wage Lawsuit

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East Wingers Inc., the operating company of New York City chicken wing outlet Best Wingers, and its owner are on the receiving end of three former delivery workers’ collective action that alleges violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state labor law. The plaintiffs claim that although they were hired as tipped delivery workers, they were forced to spend a “considerable” amount of work time performing non-tipped jobs around the restaurant, such as sweeping the sidewalk, making dressing, and stocking deliveries.

The case claims the defendants unlawfully took a tip credit on the plaintiffs’ and similarly situated workers’ wages to which they were not entitled—since the employees’ non-tipped responsibilities exceeded 20 percent of each workday—which reportedly dipped the individuals’ wages below the FLSA-mandatory minimum.

“Upon information and belief, [the defendants] employed the policy and practice of disguising [the plaintiffs’] actual duties in payroll records to avoid paying [the plaintiffs] at the minimum wage rate and to enable them to pay [the plaintiffs] at the lower tip-credited rate (which they still failed to do), by designating them as delivery workers instead of non-tipped employees,” the complaint reads.

Even further, the defendants also allegedly failed to pay proposed collective members spread-of-hours wages, owed under New York law for shifts that last longer than 10 hours in a day.