NEW ORLEANS — A group of eleven restaurant workers say they walked off the job last month at Mucho Mas Nola on Oak Street after not receiving a paycheck during the month of July.
Madeleine Dixon is one of the eleven. She started as a bartender at Mucho Mas when it opened back in January.
“I’ve been working in the service industry since I was 17 years old,” said Dixon. “And I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”
Dixon says around July 14 she and her colleagues had not been paid and threatened to walk off the job. She says the owner then promised to pay the employees their missing wages.
“He told me Monday, Wednesday at the latest,” she said. “Monday came and went, no checks. Wednesday no checks and then Friday the 21st happened. Physical checks were present at the restaurant, but we were told there was no money in the account to cash them.”
Dixon believes the owner, Shawn Toups, owes each employee at least 12 hundred dollars in unpaid wages.
We got a hold of Toups via text message Thursday, he agreed to meet for an interview Friday but later declined. Toups did agree to answer questions via text message.
In a text Toups says “I know that you saw the message sent to Madeleine admitting I owe them payroll and that I am getting a HELOC credit loan that’s finalizing now, and they will all be paid any and all wages owed to them. According to the bank it will be early next week.”
Toups says some employees are owed one week while others are owed two weeks of pay.
In another text exchange he says “And like I told all employees they will get every penny owed to them. I can promise them that. Also, Mucho Mas is closed and will never reopen and whatever does go in to the 8201 Oak Street location, nothing can and will proceed until the Mucho Mas employees are paid.”
Toups would not give a reason as to why the employees were not paid in the first place.
Dixon says she and her fellow employees are not confident they will get their money and still are unclear as to why they weren’t paid.
“I could get through this and just move past this if it was just me,” she said. “But I’m not going to allow them to get screwed over.”
Dixon has created a Gofundme and is working with the workplace justice program to help recoup lost wages. She plans to split any funds raised evenly between the 11 employees.