Former valets suing over wages at Bohemian Grove

Three people are suing the Bohemian Club, saying they were paid less than minimum wage while working as valets at the club’s big annual events at Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio — including the secretive, all-male Summer Encampment.

Anthony Gregg, Shawn Granger and Wallid Saad filed a complaint June 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging they sometimes worked seven days a week and 15-plus hours a day at the exclusive gatherings, but were directed to falsify time cards to show 40-hour workweeks.

Class action complaint against Bohemian Grove.pdf

Bohemian Club and its partners agreed to pay the remainder of what was owed, the plaintiffs say, but never fully followed through.

The Summer Encampment has drawn international attention because it is known to attract some of the world’s most powerful political and economic leaders.

The legal action is structured as a class-action lawsuit, meaning other plaintiffs could potentially join Gregg, Granger and Saad. The defendants could be liable for as much as $1.5 million.

Anthony Nunes, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, estimates that 300 employees could be eligible.

“I received calls today from other valets,” Nunes told The Press Democrat on Tuesday afternoon.

He filed the suit in federal court because the allegations of failure to pay minimum wage represent a violation of the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act.

The suit also claims violations of California’s Labor Code and the state’s Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order. It accuses the Bohemian Club, Pomella LLC and Monastery Camp — one of more than 100 “gentlemen’s associations” at Bohemian Grove — of failing to maintain accurate employment records.

The club maintains that it should not be attached to the case.

“The Bohemian Club has always valued and respected its employees, and that includes our commitment to full compliance with all applicable wage and hour laws and regulations,” Sam Singer, a communications representative for the San Francisco-based club, said in a written statement.

Each of the three plaintiffs worked for the Bohemian Club at least nine years. Valets provide guests with food, drinks and hospitality services during the gatherings.

The employees are known to work long hours.

A printed 2021 guide to the Monastery Camp asked guests not to burden staff members by asking them to do personal favors, explaining that they “will be on duty from early morning through the post-dinner clean up.”

During the 2021 Summer Encampment, a lavish outdoor experience that packs Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport with the private planes of wealthy Bohemian Grove guests in July, the three plaintiffs worked 16-plus-hour days for the duration of the 14-day camp, according to the civil complaint.

It added that as recently as last Friday, at the Spring Jinx “Burgundy Lunch,” four valets “worked nonstop for approximately 18 hours.”

The majority of the camps at Bohemian Grove use Bolt Staffing for hiring and payroll, and employment records at those camps are generally aboveboard, according to the lawsuit.

The problem, plaintiffs say, is with the camps that work outside of Bolt.

Monastery Camp is one of those. In 2018, the plaintiffs allege, all wages at Monastery were under the table. In April 2019, Bohemian Club brought in Pomella LLC, best known for its Israeli restaurant in Piedmont, in the East Bay.

At the crux of the suit is who bears responsibility for paying valets at Bohemian Grove and for keeping records associated with that employment.

Singer, in his statement, said it is not the Bohemian Club.

“We have reviewed the allegations, and it is clear the claims appearing in the lawsuit are brought by individuals who were never employed by the Bohemian Club, and therefore the Club should not be a party to this action,” he wrote.

“We believe these three individuals know full well they did not work for the Club and that this lawsuit is a transparent attempt to drag the Club into their individual circumstances. The Club will vigorously defend itself in this action, as it would in any other meritless lawsuit.”

The civil complaint seeks to establish the opposite — that the camps at the Grove are not, in themselves, legal entities, but “collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in member dues, and hire, fire, pay, and dictate nearly every aspect of the valets’ employment” at the behest of the club.

The suit further states that Bohemian Club treasurer William Dawson also was captain of Monastery Camp, and that he personally directed the camp to falsify payroll records.

If the ceremonies and performances in the secluded spaces of Bohemian Grove are cloaked in secrecy, so perhaps are its employment structures.

“I sent employment records requests to the Bohemian Club, Bohemian Grove, Monastery Camp and Pomello LLC,” said Nunes, the plaintiffs’ attorney. “I heard back from two different firms, Monastery and the club itself. Both told me essentially to go pound sand.”

Guests at Bohemian Grove have included the Rockefellers and Bechtels, every Republican president from Herbert Hoover to George H.W. Bush, U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and conservative political donors Charles and James Koch.

Supporters describe it as a casual opportunity for busy men — and only men — to unwind in the wilderness and soak in music and other arts. Critics object to the Bohemian Club’s exclusion of women, to its esoteric rituals and to what they perceive as campfire collaboration on important financial and political matters.

This is not the first time the club has been the subject of a class-action complaint over wages. It settled one of them, which eventually included more than 600 plaintiffs, for $7 million in 2016. This latest filing fits the same pattern, Nunes said.

“There’s a great hubris with this club,” the lawyer said.

“They were previously hit with a multimillion-dollar class action. They were on notice that employees must be paid for every hour they work. Some combination of arrogance and trying to save a buck has led them to the same labor violations.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.