US Open Food Servers Serve up Double Fault Class Action

March 11th, 2010. By AbiK

For all the presentation and promotion that attempts to position tennis as a pastime of the hoi polloi, it just can’t seem to get over a bit of an elitist image. It’s not the professional players that make it so—heck, many have come from the hoi polloi themselves and have in their own way given the finger to some of the elitism (recall Agassi’s earlier days…McEnroe’s outbursts…Venus and Serena’s new fashion rules). And this year, you—yes YOU—can even register to compete for a wild card into the US Open Qualifying tournament. 

So what gives? Well, if you’re part of the army of food service folks who work the Open, you might be thinking the elitism comes from the country club set who show up at the US Open outfitted in Lacoste or Brooks Brothers toting a casual & sporty—yet appropriate!—Vera Bradley or Lily Pulitzer (LL Bean if quieter propriety’s your thing) bag as they head to their box seats at the Open. See, those food service folks actually work their tails off to serve—as the 2010 US Open site describes it—”innovative menus” that feature “superb cuisine of impeccable quality and freshness” to the social set sitting in the Luxury Suites at Arthur Ashe stadium. Yeah, you’re not seeing that fare if you’re sitting Loge. Luxury Suites, by the way, will set you back $10,000 – $63,000 for a package—hey, parking’s included, catering isn’t (that’s an $1,800 minimum).

Work their tails off? Oh, but surely they make decent money, right? Surely more than the peons working those concession stands outside on the “grounds”?

Well, according to a class action lawsuit filed on March 3rd in Brooklyn federal court, those servers may not be getting paid all that much for the hours they put in serving, as the New York Post calls them “celebrities, trust-fund kids and captains of industry”. The Post quotes one worker who’s also a plaintiff, Daniel Yahraes, as saying he worked more than 100 hours a week and was paid based on his $17 an hour pay rate—no overtime pay (that’s fault #1)—and, while clients were apparently charged an additional 21 percent “service charge”, that fee was not passed along to the “service” (that’s fault #2, and shades of Cipriani?). I have to imagine that some of those workers received cash tips, but still, overtime is overtime and for Yahraes, that would arguably mean he lost out on quite a bit of cash.

Five companies are named in the lawsuit, including Restaurant Associates and the suit covers the past six years.

Tags: Employment, New York, restaurant, Unpaid Overtime, US Open

This was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Emerging Issues, Employment . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.