‘Society doesn’t care’: Gee and Ursula condemn Royal India’s wage theft

A Seattle restaurant, Royal India, is facing felony charges for stealing nearly $45,000 from employees. The owners of Royal India have been penalized more than $125,000 since 2019.

“There’s one kind of crime that we just don’t pay enough attention to, and that is wage theft,” Ursula said on KIRO Newsradio’s “The Gee and Ursula Show.” “Owners of Royal India restaurants in Lynwood and Kirkland now face 10 felony theft charges, and these stem from over 40 complaints over a three-year period, including bounced paychecks and wages that were never paid.”

More than $11 million has been paid in damages to impacted workers over the past decade, according to the City of Seattle. Approximately 320 investigations have been conducted into Royal India in that time span.

“I just don’t think we as a society care when it happens, because if we did, we would make more of a deal about this,” KIRO host Gee Scott said. “We care when we hear about a lady shoplifting, taking some bananas from the store, or if the lady takes $50 to $100 out of the till. We care about that.”

One-and-a-half billion dollars in stolen wages had been recovered from impacted U.S. workers between 2021 and 2023, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

“But when we hear about employer wage theft at this restaurant and the restaurant is supposed to pay a fine, some of us will still go eat at that restaurant,” Gee said. “Why are we still doing this with tips? The tips are to supplement the income of the servers and the staff, but the theft is usually always associated with the tips.”

Where do your tips go?

Tipping culture has been at the forefront of public outcry in recent years, often perceived as excessive and unnecessary.

“I know that the people who don’t want to get rid of tipping are people who actually get the tips, because there’s no way that an employer is going to make up the amount that they can get in tips, especially in some of the higher-end restaurants. Forget about it,” Ursula said.

Listen to the full conversation here.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.