Italian restaurant chain Il Fornaio to pay $3 million to settle sexual harassment lawsuit
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Set us as preferred Il Fornaio, a California-based Italian restaurant chain, will pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit from the U.S.Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over allegations of “ongoing, continuous and severe” sexual harassment of at least 100 female employees, many of whom were teenagers, the EEOC’s Los Angeles District announced this month.The 2022 lawsuit charged the restaurant chain with creating a sexually hostile work environment for female employees and retaliating against those who reported it.
Il Fornaio is headquartered in Corte Madera and operates 15 locations across California and Nevada.Supervisors and employees across multiple locations allegedly subjected female workers to repeated sexual harassment, including “forceful groping in restaurant bathrooms, multiple instances of grabbing female employees’ private parts, requests for sexual favors, and explicit references to sexual activities,” the EEOC said.In one instance, a teenage employee at the restaurant’s Palo Alto location told her managers she was raped by an older male employee, but was told that “nothing could be done because the rape happened outside of work, even though the employee had experienced harassment at work for months prior,” according to an amended complaint filed in 2024.
The complaint says male employees at “all levels” of the company helped create and maintain the hostile work environment, from the vice president of operations to managers, bartenders, line cooks, food runners and bussers.As a result, hundreds of women were affected, and many were compelled to resign.The conduct “went unchecked, was open and notorious, and was ratified by higher-level management, resulting in a revolving door of female workers who left due to the intolerable working conditions,” the complaint says.
Representatives for...