SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Employees of a local restaurant group protested Wednesday outside one of its several locations, claiming unpaid wages and bounced checks.
Employees tell ABC 10News they work at The Guild Hotel downtown but weren’t employed by the hotel until days ago. Instead, they worked for Be Saha Hospitality Group, founded by Amar Harrag.
"We want our money because we worked for it; we’re not interns, we’re not volunteers, we work really hard for this guy, and we make him a lot of money," said Brisebois.
The employees claim the hotel recently cut ties with Harrag, meaning he’d no longer operate its food and beverage, but say when the relationship, they didn’t get their final checks on time.
"It’s just completely unacceptable for us to have put in 2 weeks' worth of hard labor and just have money that we thought we were going to get evaporate," says Brisebois.
Employees from other locations owned by Be Saha also joined the protest, alleging bounced checks for months.
Harrag claims the hotel owes him, which he says, in turn, delayed final paychecks. He showed us a message that he says proves employees received a sign-on bonus from the hotel and checks from him today. He also provided emails in which he claimed he attempted to get the money from the hotel.
"We requested those funds early on, we requested them multiple times and asking and making sure that our employees receive their final pay on time and unfortunately those funds, we still haven’t received anything," says Amar Harrag, the founder of Be Saha.
He said the paychecks that went out today were due to a private loan he took out to pay his employees.
"So, it’s really unfortunate that at this point, they really feel that somehow we’re not doing something right by them when we spent literally 14 months fighting for them," adds Harrag.
ABC 10News contacted The Guild Hotel after hours via email to multiple addresses listed on their website, and all but one bounced back. So far, we haven't heard back.
