When Chloe’ Jacks worked as a waitress at the Logan’s Roadhouse restaurants in Cleveland, Tenn., and Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., she says she’d spend hours every night rolling silverware inside napkins, restocking and doing other side work while making a server’s wage of $2.13 an hour – but not earning any tips.
“Most of the closing work, it would take up to two hours or more, and you’re only getting paid $2.13 an hour,” said Jacks, 22, who lives with her parents in Cleveland.
Jacks is one of at least a half a dozen Chattanooga-area current and former Logan’s employees – and more than 3,000 nationwide – who’ve joined a class-action lawsuit against the Nashville-based restaurant chain. It alleges Logan’s short-changed its employees by having them spend more than 20 percent of their time doing non-tipped side work while clocked in as tipped employees in order to save payroll costs and payroll taxes.
“Logan’s enjoyed ill-gained profits at the expense of its employees,” says the complaint filed on behalf of Nashville Logan’s bartenders Carey Bradford and Cody Bolen in U.S. District Court in Nashville by attorney Gordon E. Jackson of the Memphis firm Jackson, Shields, Yeiser and Holt.
The lawsuit also alleges that Logan’s made servers falsely report “phantom tips” during the hours they were only paid $2.13 an hour to make it look like they were being paid the required minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.