Restaurant workers sue owner of Ole Ole, alleging unpaid wages

They said they didn’t want it to get this point, but it has.

Three weeks ago workers from the Andersonville restaurant Ole Ole protested outside the establishment, alleging the owner owed them more than $100,000 in unpaid wages. They wanted an amicable settlement, said Veronica Avila, coordinator for the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago, which is assisting the workers. But they were willing to consider other options.

Today, the workers sued. 

Juvenal Mendoza, Victor Vega and Victor Hugo Jeronimo filed the class-action lawsuit in federal court. The suit says that Regina Pavone, Ole Ole’s owner, committed a host of labor violations. Workers didn’t make the minimum wage, they weren’t paid for all the hours they worked and they didn’t receive overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a week.

Pavone declined to comment.

The lawsuit says that during the course of Vega’s and Jeronimo’s employment, Pavone “would fail to issue any paychecks at all for individual work weeks.” Other times the checks would be “drawn from accounts with insufficient funds.” Sometimes, when customers paid for their meals with credit cards, the server never received his tip.

Workers and their supporters will be protesting at 6 p.m. tonight outside the shuttered restaurant at 5413 N. Clark St.