Illegal activities of Southern Bosses for the week ending on Friday, September 8

LOUISIANA THIEVES

The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment requiring the operator of a New Orleans-area home healthcare agency to pay 80 workers a total of $630,000 in back wages and damages after the employer misclassified them as independent contractors.

The judgment against Parishes Supportive Living Inc. and owner Belinda Vining-Trepagnier follows an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division that found the employers’ misclassification denied overtime pay and other benefits and protections to employees assigned to the agency’s locations in Metairie and Hammond in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The division’s review of the employer’s pay practices from December 2019 to December 2022 found Parishes Supportive Living willfully failed to pay overtime wages for hours over 40 in a workweek, as required by law.

In addition to payment of back wages and damages, the employers must retain an independent third-party auditor to review the company’s payroll and pay practices for a three-year period and prepare status reports on the employer’s ongoing FLSA compliance.

LOUISIANA DISCRIMINATORS

Hooters of Louisiana, LLC and associated companies (“Hooters”) have agreed to pay former black employees $650,000 to settle a race and retaliation lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, Hooters subjected African American employees at a Metairie-located Hooters restaurant to a workplace environment of offensive and demeaning remarks based on their race since at least 2017. Hooters also did not rehire any of the restaurant’s African American employees after laying off staff in 2020 at the outset of the pandemic. Instead, according to the lawsuit, Hooters initially restaffed the restaurant solely with non-Black employees. Several of the laid-off African American employees complained about the offensive racial remarks and hiring practices, but none of the former African American employees were rehired despite their qualifications. 

Under the three-year consent decree, Hooters will pay the former employees $650,000 in backpay and damages, and also conduct training, revise policies, provide regular reports to the EEOC, and post a notice affirming its obligations under Title VII.

NORTH CAROLINA DISCRIMINATORS

Hooters of America, LLC, a Georgia Corporation, violated federal law when it failed to recall employees after a COVID-motivated layoff because they were Black and/or had dark skin tones, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleged in a lawsuit it filed last week.

In March of 2020, the Greensboro Hooters restaurant laid off approximately 43 employees in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The EEOC’s lawsuit alleges that a class of employees who were Black and/or had dark skin tones and worked as “Hooters Girls” at the Greensboro restaurant were among those laid off. When the restaurant began recalling employees to return to work in May of 2020, the restaurant recalled mostly employees who were White or had light skin tones, the EEOC says.

Of the 13 Hooters Girls recalled to the Greensboro location in May 2020, 12 were white and/or had light skin tones, reflecting a marked shift in the racial composition of the restaurant’s Hooters Girls workforce. Prior to the layoffs, 51% of the Hooters Girls were Black and/or had dark skin tones. After the May 2020 recall, only 8% of the Hooters Girls were Black and/or had dark skin tones. According to the complaint, Hooters Girls with dark skin tones experienced racial hostility and observed preferential treatment of White employees while employed at the restaurant.

Such conduct violates the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects individuals from workplace discrimination and harassment. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its voluntary conciliation process.

The EEOC seeks monetary relief for the employees, including back pay, and compensatory and punitive damages. The EEOC also seeks injunctive relief against the company to end any ongoing discrimination and to prevent such unlawful conduct in the future.

Dishonorable Mentions:

• Employment & Training Centers, Inc. in Houston, TX violated federal law by refusing to provide a reasonable accommodation for an individual applying for a data entry position, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit.

• The University of Texas, Permian Basin has agreed to pay $46,000 in damages and to furnish other relief in order to settle a pay discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

• TNT Crane & Rigging, Inc., violated federal law by subjecting four Black employees to race-based discrimination and harassment, the EEOC charged in a lawsuit filed in federal court today. The EEOC also charged the company with retaliating against a white employee for raising allegations of race-based discrimination at its Fort Worth, Texas branch.

FINAL NOTE: BOSSES WON'T SAVE YOU

Despite the news we bring you every week about bosses breaking the law coming primarily from government agencies, you can imagine a lot of these incidents go unreported, and bosses get away with theft, with hurting their employees, discrimination, etc. And that’s true, and that’s why unionization is so important - obviously, the raises and better benefits are a big plus. But safety matters a lot, and you don’t get to take advantage of that big juicy raise if you’re dead. That’s why unions focus so much on safety and why union worksites are so much safer. A new piece of evidence for this came out last week in Health Affairs, where researchers from George Washington University showed that unionized nursing homes were 78%  more likely to be in compliance with OSHA reporting standards.

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