(Image: McMenamins Six Arms)
A Capitol Hill cousin of the ubiquitous-in-Oregon McMenamins food, drink, and hotel chain is paying up after a wage theft investigation by the Seattle Office of Labor Standards.
In the settlement announced Friday, the Portland-headquartered company of 5,000 employees agreed to a $91,000 settlement in the case over allegations of violations of the city’s Secure Scheduling Ordinance at E Pike’s McMenamins Six Arms.
The city says the settlement will apply to 131 workers at the Capitol Hill bar and includes back wages, interest, liquidated damages, and civil penalties including a $691.87 fine.
The city alleges McMenamins failed to pay required “premium pay” to its workers “in all instances where it was owed” due to employer-initiated changes to work schedules. The McMenamins payroll management system also did no record which changes were employer and which were employee initiated changes or if “an exception to premium pay applied,” the city says.
Officials say McMenamins is one of 54 settlements under the Secure Scheduling Ordinance since the law went into effect in 2017. Financial remedies have totaled more than $10,300,000 in cases involving more than 11,000 workers.
CHS reported here on the law’s formation that requires Seattle’s largest restaurants and retailers to pay extra for schedule changes and on-call shifts.
The ordinance can be good for workers but a headache for companies to update payroll systems to implement. Under the settlement, McMenamins agreed to adopt an updated Secure Scheduling policy, the city says.
2025, meanwhile, marks Seattle’s 10-year anniversary of its overhauled minimum wage that is now pegged to inflation and has reached $20.76 an hour.
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