Restaurant chain Chipotle is dealing with some legal issues right now, for failing to pay overtime compensation to several employees, which, according to The Huffington Post, are entitled to receive them, under a Labor Department rule.
The lawsuit was filed this Wednesday in a New Jersey federal court and it maintains the rule issued by the Obama administration. To be more specific, this law expands overtime pay to salaried workers and can still be applied, even though a preliminary injunction, blocking the Legal Department from enforcing it, was issued last year, in November.
A lot of employees are expecting compensations
One of the employees who wants to see results take by this legal action is lead plaintiff Carmen Alvarez, a manager-in-training who wasn’t eligible for overtime under the old salary cap, but was under the new one, according to the same source, citing Joseph Sellers, one of the lawyers in charge with the suit.
According to Mr. Sellers, Carmen Alvarez, as well as many other employees, was paid for a few weeks of overtime they were newly qualified to receive. However, they stopped receiving payment from Chipotle when the federal injunction was issued.
“The Fair Labor Standards Act has two ways of enforcing overtime rule. One is from [the] Department of Labor, and the other is individual parties,” Sellers explained. “The injunction stops the Department of Labor, but says nothing about private enforcement.”
Chipotle doesn’t consider that they broke the law, in some way or another
As for Chipotle’s position, they received to comment on pending litigation.
“All of our employment practices are compliant with applicable laws. I would also note that a lawsuit is nothing more than allegation, and is proof of absolutely nothing,” said the restaurant chain, in a statement.
The company is expected to argue that the new rule never went into effect, since the injunction stopped it.
