On September 16, 2024, the Labor Commissioner’s Office (LCO) announced a $1.7 million settlement in a wage theft case involving five Wingstop locations in Bakersfield, California. The settlement benefits about 550 workers who were allegedly denied fair wages, overtime, and meal breaks. The case involved a franchise owner, who tried to get around labor laws by creating separate companies for each of his Wingstop locations.
Between 2019 and 2022, the owner treated each location as a different employer operated by separate corporate entities and shared the employees between the locations. The owner purportedly did that to pay the lower minimum wage rate for employers with 25 or less employees.
Employees who worked at more than one location in a day allegedly were also not paid overtime, even when they worked over eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. Workers also didn’t get paid for their time spent traveling between the restaurants. Finally, they were not compensated for missed meal breaks.
The LCO started investigating the case in November 2020 after receiving a report of labor law violations. This settlement covers back wages, missed meal period premiums, and waiting time penalties for violating California labor laws.
(See Link(s): Labor Code Sections 226.7, 512, 1194, 1194.2, 2802)