Former Lubach’s Employees Demand Back Wages in Protest

More than 30 former employees of Lubach’s Restaurant, which went out of business in November, picketed in front of the restaurant Thursday to demand immediate payment of wages owed them and to criticize Bob Lubach, their former employer, for telling them less than 12 hours ahead of time that they no longer had jobs.

The employees never received paychecks for the last two weeks of work, and were not paid for unused vacation time, said Jef Eatchel, spokesman for the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union of San Diego, which is representing the former employees. Each is entitled to up to $2,000, which is about as much as any of them are owed, Eatchel said. Lubach’s business also owes the employee health and benefits fund almost $30,000 in unpaid premiums, he said.

A San Diego creditor’s association is handling the liquidation of the business. The employees will be paid first out of the funds that become available after the assets are sold, said Carl Gerner, president of San Diego Wholesale Creditors.

Eatchel feels the process is too slow for the employees.

“When are we going to get (the money)?” he asked. “These people are living from paycheck to paycheck.”

Gerner said several parties have expressed an interest in buying the business, but would not offer any other details. If the business cannot be sold, the assets--fixtures, equipment and a liquor license--will be auctioned.

For 35 years, Lubach’s Restaurant served Maine lobster and Dover sole imported from the Netherlands at its waterfront location on Harbor Drive. But rising food costs and dwindling numbers of customers, which once included dignitaries and entertainers such as Bob Hope, forced the restaurant to shut, Lubach told The Times in November.

Employees said they knew the restaurant was facing hard times and made concessions such as giving up paid holidays to help Lubach scrape by. Carlos Parras, who worked at the restaurant for 28 years, said several employees gave Lubach one week of accrued vacation on a promise that the restaurant would stay open until 1992.

In the end, Parras said, all he got was a phone call from another employee not to come to work the next day because the restaurant would be closed.

“I think you deserve some kind of explanation after 28 years,” said the former assistant chef, who started at the restaurant as a dishwasher. “I worked here most of my life. I was 16 or 17 when I started. I’m 46 now.”

Parras’ brother, Adolfo, a 31-year-employee, said he said good night to Lubach the night before the restaurant closed.

“He said good night to me, and that was it,” he said. “The next day I came back, and the doors were closed. You’d think, after 31 years, he’d say something to me.”

Adolfo said that, if he had had 30 days’ notice, he would have had a better chance of finding work as a waiter. Restaurants are not hiring as many waiters now as the holiday season winds down, and business is expected to be slow until February.

Lubach could not be reached for comment.

Eatchel said about 10 of the 45 employees have found new jobs.