Casino Workers Suing Twin River For Undercounting Hours Worked

LINCOLN, RI — Dozens of tipped workers at Bally's Twin River Casino filed a class action lawsuit against its parent company, claiming it unlawfully undercounted their hours worked and failed to pay correct overtime wages.

The complaint was filed by about 80 tipped employees in U.S. District Court last month and accuses Twin River of not accounting for tip credits when calculating employee payments. Instead, Twin River paid its workers an overtime rate of one-and-half times the regular pay rate, which falls below Rhode Island's minimum wage. Attorney Chip Muller in the complaint wrote that Twin River's actions were a violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

"Twin River’s violations were willful, repeated, and intentional," Attorney Chip Muller wrote in the complaint.

Patch reached out to Twin River for comment on the lawsuit, but a spokesperson for the casino said they don't comment on legal or personnel matters.

The complaint also accused Twin River of taking advantage of an unfair employee time card system to underpay its workers.

"Twin River utilizes a rounding policy by which it rounds those punches to the nearest 15 minutes, but partners that policy with instructions designed to under-count hours worked," the complaint reads, "According to the Biased Rounding Policy, Twin River prohibits employees from punching in more than seven minutes before their shift starts and instructs employees to punch in for their shifts prior to the start of their shift to work. In light of the above, the Biased Rounding Policy is not neutral in that it is designed to result in Twin River under-counting hours worked."

The employees, which include servers, bartenders and dealers, are seeking three years worth of wages they claim went unpaid, two times the amount of wages lost plus interest and legal fees.