The fine-dining restaurant Canlis in Seattle has agreed to pay $1.45 million to roughly 300 workers to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging violations of the state’s wage-theft ordinance.
Although such lawsuits are increasingly common across the industry, the allegations against Canlis are noteworthy in part because they involve charges of failure to pay wages for first-day trial, or “stage” work. The charges also included failure to provide rest breaks, and improper distribution of the 20% automatic service charge, according to The Seattle Times.
With the settlement, however, the company denied wrongdoing.
“While we don’t agree with these accusations, choosing to settle was the best way to get back to taking care of our team and our guests,” said Canlis’ co-owner Brian Canlis in a statement. “For 74 years, Canlis has genuinely loved and served its employees. We look forward to continuing these traditions.”
Once considered a tradition in fine dining, a stage is typically when a rising chef spends time in another restaurant to sharpen skills or learn new techniques, as recently portrayed in the series “The Bear.” Many restaurants may also ask a chef to do a kitchen trial before hiring them, to see how they perform.
Unless they are student interns, however, asking people to work without pay could be a violation of both federal and state laws.
The now-defunct Willows Inn on Lummi Island in Washington state, for example, in 2017 was charged by the U.S. Department of Labor with violating the Fair Labor Standards Act for asking entry-level kitchen staff to perform stages of one month as a free trial period before they were considered for paid employment. Then, once on the payroll, the restaurant paid a daily rate of $50 for up to 14 hours work, with no consideration of overtime, according to the labor department.
Willows Inn at the time agreed to settle and paid 19 workers close to $150,000 in unpaid overtime and damages. The restaurant also agreed to cancel its stage program. Willows Inn later closed in 2022.
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