Harrisburg restaurant chain to pay $750K for wage violations

More than 1,000 employees of a Harrisburg-based bar and grill franchise will receive back pay for wages not paid to them over a 30-month period, the U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday.

In a settlement agreement, Arooga's Grille House and Sports Bar agreed to pay $375,003 to 1,039 current and former servers, cooks and assistant kitchen managers at restaurants in York, Camp Hill, Lower Paxton, Mechanicsburg, Hanover and Harrisburg.

Employees also will receive an equal amount in damages.

“Employees depend on receiving the wages they have rightfully earned,” said Alfonso Gristina, a Pennsylvania-based district director for the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, which investigated Arooga's.

Investigators said tipped employees' pay dipped below the $7.25 minimum wage when money was deducted from their paychecks because of cash-drawer shortages, customer walkouts and order mistakes. Some employees worked 65 to 70 hours in a week without overtime pay, the Department of Labor said in a news release.

Arooga's cofounder Gary Huether Jr. told PennLive that the investigation ended in 2013 and he didn't know why the Department of Labor waited until now to release the details.

“Everyone has been paid. It's nothing new,” he said.

Huether told PennLive that Arooga's did not deliberately break the law.

The Arooga's announcement follows this week's resolution of a similar labor dispute in Pittsburgh.

More than 900 current and former Primanti Bros. employees will receive a piece of a $2.1 million wage-violation settlement with the restaurant chain known for serving sandwiches stuffed with french fries.

Chelsea Koenig, a former bartender at the Primanti Bros. restaurant in Mt. Lebanon, filed a federal class-action lawsuit in September 2016 alleging the Pittsburgh-based company did not pay employees who rely on tips the mandated minimum wage in Pennsylvania of $7.25 an hour.

More than 670 of the former employees who participated in the lawsuit worked at Primanti Bros. locations in Pennsylvania. Primanti Bros. has 37 restaurants in Florida, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

Matthew Medsger is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-226-4675, mmedsger@tribweb.com or via Twitter @matthew_medsger.