A popular chain of sports bars based in Philadelphia has agreed to pay $6.8 million in back wages and damages for improperly taking tips from waiters and bartenders and for violating minimum wage and overtime laws, the Labor Department announced Thursday.
The department said that Chickie’s & Pete’s, which has nine sports bars in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, illegally underpaid and took a percentage of tips from 1,159 servers.
The Labor Department accused Chickie’s & Pete’s of often not topping off waiters’ wages, sometimes not paying the initial $2.13 an hour and often not paying time and a half when employees worked more than 40 hours a week.