Del Posto to Pay $1.15 Million to Settle Workers\' Suit

September 24, 2012, 5:22 pm

By JEFF GORDINIER

Del Posto, an Italian restaurant in Chelsea run by Mario Batali and Joe and Lidia Bastianich, has agreed to pay $1.15 million as part of a settlement with 31 current and former employees.

The restaurant, which received four stars from Sam Sifton in The Times two years ago, was hit with a lawsuit in 2010. The employees behind the suit - members of a workers' rights organization called the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), which provided assistance - had complained of problems with wages, tips and overtime, as well as “race and national origin discrimination and retaliation,” according to a press release.

Earlier this year, Mr. Batali and Mr. Bastianich agreed to pay $5.2 5 million to resolve a different lawsuit, one in which employees from a range of restaurants had charged that portions of their tips were being illegally confiscated.

Regarding this new $1.15 million settlement, Mr. Batali said in a statement: “B&B Hospitality Group is proud to share that we have come to an amicable resolution with the ROC and look forward to working with ROC-NY to continue to foster and improve a mutually beneficial relationship with our team.”

The press release said that “Del Posto and its principals have denied all of the workers' allegations and maintain that they remain committed to ensuring that employees receive all compensation to which they are entitled, including all tips.”

As part of the agreement, Del Posto will become a “High Road Employer,” collaborating directly with ROC-NY on a variety of issues, including taking a close look at wages, benefits, sick days and vacation time.

“ What are employers offering to workers to improve their lives?” said Daisy Chung, the executive director of ROC-NY. “We want to show the industry that it's possible to do these things and still be profitable.”

Jonathan Bernstein, a partner at Levy, Davis & Maher, one of the law firms that represented the workers, said that many of them were Latino and had encountered “racial slurs” from some of their managers, whose “conduct indicated that they believed in a lot of pernicious stereotypes about Latinos.”

In response to that, Mr. Bernstein said, there will now be cultural sensitivity training at Del Posto. There will also be more of an emphasis on promoting employees from within the restaurant and training them for new roles, because, he said, “in the past it has been difficult or impossible for our clients to rise up through the ranks.”