Current and former workers at Pyramid Alehouse in the Sodo district of Seattle will split a $450,000 settlement reached with Independent Brewers United, the owners of Pyramid, after a class action lawsuit was filed over wage and hour violations at the brewpub.
The average payout to the 300 workers affected will be about $1,000. In the lawsuit, bartenders and servers said they weren't paid overtime, weren't given meal and rest breaks, and that their timesheets were manipulated to delete hours worked, among other claims.
Danielle Alvarado, legal director of the Fair Work Center in Seattle, says Pyramid workers came to the center when they noticed their pay stubs often didn't match their time sheets.
Back pay, she says, is just one part of the settlement. There's also a requirement that the company train employees about their rights. "That's to make sure that what went on at Pyramid won't go on in the future," she said.
Independent Brewers United did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement.
Washington state and the City of Seattle have some of the strongest wage theft laws in the country, but Alvarado says violations are common in the service industry.
"What's on paper and what's happening in practice can be really different when workers don't necessarily know what rights they have under the law,” she said. “And they don't necessarily know when a practice which doesn't seem right actually violates the law.”
