FLSA violations are commonplace in the restaurant and food industries. Under federal overtime laws, employees cannot “volunteer,” or work any hours for their employer without compensation.  However, some recent cases serve as examples as to how employers attempt to deceive or coerce employees into working without pay.

1. Employees have sued chain restaurants for various employment violations, including the following abuses:
   • illegally taking a “tip credit” from employees who are working in a job in which they do not receive tips;
   • illegally taking a tip credit from employees by including managers and/or other tipped employees in the "tip pool";
   • failing to compensate employees for working “off the clock”;
   • not paying certain restaurant managers overtime wages.
2. Another common abuse occurs where restaurants charge a fixed percentage of a customer’s meal, often as an automatic 15% gratuity charge, but the restaurant nevertheless continues to take a tip credit against the employees' minimum wages.
3. Employers of meat-packing facilities have been sued because they failed to compensate employees for certain pre-shift and post-shift duties, like when they prepared equipment for work during off-hours, or don or doff protective gear and equipment.
4. Many lawsuits are successfully filed against grocery stores for "rounding down" employees work time, working employees “off-the-clock,” or otherwise failing to pay employees for all time worked.
5. Workers in the Meat and Poultry Industries have sued their employers for the following infractions:

• not compensating their employees for short breaks;
• working them “off-the-clock;”
• failing to pay overtime in pre-shift and post-shift duties, such as time spent putting on or taking off safety and sanitary work clothes or sharpening knives; and
• failing to include production bonuses in the their regular rate of pay for overtime purposes.