Dive Brief:
- Washington, D.C., has reached a roughly $525,000 settlement with Swahili Village in its wage theft suit against the restaurant, court records show.
- In 2023, the District sued Swahili Village, alleging the company paid workers less than D.C.’s minimum wage, did not pay them or underpaid them for training days which workers were required to attend, and failed to keep accurate payroll records, according to the suit.
- Under the settlement, the restaurant must pay over $260,000 in back wages and damages to 72 workers, about $197,000 in damages to the District, and about $69,000 in claims administration for the back pay, according to the settlement and a press release announcing the terms.
Dive Insight:
In addition to the payments, Swahili Village agreed to comply with all wage and hour laws in D.C. and to provide documentation of its compliance for three years.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb described the settlement as “a significant win for dozens of Swahili Village workers.”
Rowles Adams, a former bartender at Swahili Village, hoped the settlement would raise awareness of the prevalence of wage theft in the restaurant industry.
“For months, I saw managers mistreat my coworkers, including many young immigrants who did not even realize that what was happening was wrong. I spoke out, but it didn’t change things,” Adams said in the press release announcing the settlement.
According to the suit, Swahili Village frequently paid servers as little as $5 an hour, including tips, at a time when D.C.’s minimum wage as at least $14 an hour. The suit also claimed that the restaurant regularly took tips from bartenders and servers, ostensibly to redistribute among the rest of the staff, and then pocketed the money.
The settlement does not constitute an admission of guilt by the restaurant or its owners and cannot be used as evidence of fault in any civil or criminal prosecutions against the company.
According to the press release, Schwalb’s office has secured more than $10 million in back pay and damages in labor investigations since January 2023. Last year, Chipotle agreed to a $300,000 child labor settlement with D.C.
Outside of D.C., the U.S. Department of Labor has made restaurant wage theft an enforcement priority. In October, the DOL secured about $1 million in back wages from a Subway franchisee, which shut down as part of the settlement. In March 2024, another Subway franchisee agreed to pay more than $218,000 in tip pooling case. In December, the DOL sued a California bistro for misclassifying many of its workers.
