Massage therapists, estheticians, nail technicians, fitness instructors and hair stylists who worked at Spa Grande inside the Grand Wailea, a Waldorf Astoria Resort on Maui, may be covered by a proposed class and collective action alleging the resort misclassified them as independent contractors and paid them on commission only while requiring them to stay on site through unpaid hours. No class has been certified and there is nothing to file yet.
Allegations Only · No Settlement Yet
This article describes a class and collective action complaint. The statements below are unproven allegations. The Grand Wailea, Waldorf=Astoria Management and the other defendants have not been found liable, there is no certified class, and nothing to claim at this time. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Is This About?
Workers who provided spa services at Spa Grande, inside the Grand Wailea resort in Wailea on Maui, allege they spent years classified as independent contractors when they were functionally employees. The case is Bolos v. Waldorf=Astoria Management LLC, No. 1:23-cv-00104-JMS-KJM, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, before Judge J. Michael Seabright and Magistrate Judge Kenneth J. Mansfield. It was filed February 23, 2023 and has since grown from a single named plaintiff into a combined individual, class and collective action covering roughly 130 workers.The pay structure is the heart of it. According to the complaint, the workers were paid entirely on commission — the named plaintiff's agreement set a 50 percent commission on nail services — while the resort set their schedules and required them to remain on the property for the full shift whether or not a client was booked. During those gaps they allege they cleaned, laundered linens, swept, took inventory and staffed a retail counter, and were paid nothing for any of it.
On May 8, 2026 the Hawaii Supreme Court handed down the most consequential ruling in the case so far, and it did not come from the trial court. Answering a question Judge Seabright certified to it, the state's high court held that Hawaii's minimum wage is measured hour by hour, not averaged across a workweek. That is a rule of statewide application, and for commission workers with long unpaid stretches it is the difference between a violation that shows up in the math and one that disappears into an average.
Free settlement alerts
Get notified when new class actions open to claims
Join thousands of readers who get the latest class action settlements you may qualify for — delivered straight to your inbox.
What the Complaint Alleges
The operative complaint pleads that the defendants willfully misclassified the workers as independent contractors, and that the misclassification was the mechanism for everything else. The specific allegations include:- Commission-only pay with no guaranteed hourly wage or salary, so that a scheduled shift with few or no clients produced little or no earnings.
- Required on-site presence for the whole shift, with unpaid non-service work — cleaning, laundry, sweeping, inventory, staffing a retail store — filling the gaps.
- No overtime premium for weeks that ran past 40 hours.
- Pay records that, the complaint says, captured only time spent performing client services and not time spent at the workplace between appointments.
- Wage statements that did not itemize hours, rates and deductions as Hawaii and California law require.
- Denial of the benefits that attach to employee status — temporary disability insurance, unemployment coverage, prepaid group health care under Hawaii's Prepaid Health Care Act, and workers' compensation.
- Contracts presented at renewal on what the complaint calls a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with non-compete and non-solicitation terms and restrictions on contacting clients directly.
The complaint also carries a civil RICO count, alleging that the misclassification was carried out as a scheme to avoid payroll tax and insurance obligations, and an unjust enrichment count. Those are aggressive theories in a wage case and they are, like everything else here, unproven.
The defendants named include Waldorf=Astoria Management LLC, which operates the Grand Wailea, along with GW Manager LLC, BRE Iconic GWR Owner LLC and BRE Hotels & Resorts LLC, and several executives sued individually. They deny the allegations and have contested the case at every stage. No court has found any of them liable.
The Hawaii Supreme Court Ruling — and Why It Reaches Past This Case
Federal courts applying the Fair Labor Standards Act have long allowed a form of arithmetic called workweek averaging. Total a worker's pay for the week, divide by hours worked, and if the result clears the federal minimum wage, there is no minimum wage violation — even if several individual hours in that week were paid nothing at all.That method is generous to a commission-only employer. A stylist who earns well on a busy Saturday can have that Saturday's money spread across a Tuesday spent folding towels in an empty spa, and the average comes out fine. Whether Hawaii's own minimum wage statute permitted the same maneuver was an open question, and it was dispositive enough that Judge Seabright deferred ruling on the certification motions in a November 13, 2025 order and sent the question to the state's high court instead.
The certified question asked which unit of measure applies when assessing compliance and damages under Hawaii Revised Statutes sections 387-2 and 387-12 — the per-workweek unit used under federal law, or a per-hour unit used in some states. In an opinion by Justice Eddins filed May 8, 2026, the Hawaii Supreme Court answered: per hour. The statute says "per hour," the court found that language unambiguous, and it declined to import the federal averaging rule into state law. Compliance and damages under Hawaii's minimum wage law are measured hour by hour.
The practical reach goes well beyond one Maui spa. Any Hawaii pay arrangement that depends on averaging earnings across a week to clear the wage floor — commission work, piece-rate work, per-job pay where the worker is nonetheless required to be present — is now measured differently. Workers in those arrangements who assumed a good week cured a bad hour have a different question to ask. Readers who want the general framework can start with OCA's explainer on FLSA wage and hour violations and the wage and hour class action pillar.
One thing the ruling did not do: decide whether the Grand Wailea did anything wrong. A certified question answers a point of law for the federal court that asked it. Whether these workers were employees, whether hours went unpaid and what any of it is worth are all still live questions in front of Judge Seabright.
How the Case Got Here
The docket is unusually contentious for a wage case, and the fights have been mostly about procedure rather than pay.Shortly after the complaint was filed, the defendants moved to compel arbitration and to stay the action, and separately moved to dismiss one individual defendant for lack of personal jurisdiction. The case was stayed and administratively closed in August 2023 while the parties tried to settle. That did not work — the magistrate judge vacated a December 2023 settlement conference after concluding settlement discussions were premature — and the stay was lifted in January 2024.
Days later the plaintiffs went to court on an emergency basis, seeking a temporary restraining order over agreements the resort was putting in front of spa workers while the case was pending. The court took no further action on the motion after the parties reached a stipulation in February 2024 addressing the effect of those agreements on existing claims, and the motion was deemed moot.
A second amended class and collective action complaint was filed in June 2024 and corrected in July 2024, expanding the case to the roughly 130 plaintiffs it carries now. The defendants withdrew their renewed motion to compel arbitration by stipulation as part of allowing that amendment, then answered and filed a partial motion to dismiss along with a fresh motion to compel arbitration directed at the new pleading. On July 31, 2024 the court granted in part and denied in part the personal jurisdiction challenge to the individual defendant.
Then came the certification question. Rather than rule on the plaintiffs' motions for class certification under Rule 23 and for FLSA collective certification, the court held them and certified the state-law question in November 2025. With the Hawaii Supreme Court's answer in hand since May 2026, the case is back in front of the district court, and the docket shows continued activity through September 2026.
Who Would Be Covered
The pleaded groups are broader than the Spa Grande treatment rooms, though that is the core.The FLSA collective, as pleaded, covers commission and hourly paid staff who worked for the defendants in Hawaii or California within the three years before the case was filed and who were misclassified as independent contractors, not fully paid overtime, or not paid the applicable minimum wage. The Hawaii subclass reaches back six years; the California subclass, tied to a salon operating inside the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, uses that state's shorter periods.
Beyond the spa itself, the complaint alleges the same independent contractor arrangement was applied to groundskeepers, facilities maintenance workers and window washers at Waldorf Astoria properties in Hawaii and California. The complaint puts more than 90 massage therapists and roughly 25 nail technicians, lead technicians, stylists and lead stylists at Spa Grande during the relevant period.
None of that is a class definition yet. Certification is the pending question, and the court can certify a narrower group, a different group, or none at all.
What Happens Next
The near-term milestone is a ruling on the two certification motions the court deferred. A grant would put notice in front of workers who have not joined; a denial would leave the current plaintiffs litigating individually. Either way the state-law question that held things up is now answered.After that the case faces the ordinary path of a contested wage case: summary judgment on employee status under the applicable economic-reality and control tests, damages work that will now be done hour by hour rather than week by week, and either a trial date or a settlement. Nothing in the record announces a settlement, and there is no fund, no administrator and no claim form. Anyone telling a Grand Wailea worker otherwise is wrong.
OCA will update this page if a class is certified, if a settlement is reached, or if notice goes out to workers.
If You Worked at the Spa
Nothing here requires action, and there is no form to file. Two practical notes, though, apply to anyone in a commission-only arrangement watching this case.Keep whatever records you still have — schedules, appointment logs, commission statements, the contracts themselves. In a misclassification case the fight is usually about how many hours a worker was actually required to be present, and that is precisely the number a commission-only timekeeping system tends not to capture.
And note that signing a new agreement is not always the end of an existing claim. That question was litigated here in early 2024 and resolved by stipulation. A worker who is unsure where they stand should talk to an employment attorney licensed in their state rather than rely on a general article.
Sources and Verification
This page draws on the class action complaint filed February 23, 2023 and the corrected second amended class and collective action complaint in Bolos v. Waldorf=Astoria Management LLC, No. 1:23-cv-00104-JMS-KJM, U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, and on the public docket in that case, available through the Free Law Project's CourtListener docket and on GovInfo. The May 8, 2026 ruling is the Hawaii Supreme Court's answer to a certified question in Bolos v. Waldorf=Astoria Management LLC, No. SCCQ-25-0000822, published by the Hawaii State Judiciary and mirrored on Justia. Reporting on the case and the ruling includes the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Maui Now and Bloomberg Law.For a comparable misclassification case where workers say a contractor label was used to avoid overtime, see OCA's page on the Great Day Improvements installer overtime lawsuit.
Questions
Is there anything to claim in the Grand Wailea spa workers case?
No. There is no settlement, no settlement fund and no claim form. The case is active litigation in federal court in Hawaii, no class has been certified under Rule 23, and the court deferred ruling on the certification motions while it waited for the Hawaii Supreme Court to answer a question of state law. Anyone who sees a site offering to file a Grand Wailea claim should treat it with suspicion.
What did the Hawaii Supreme Court actually decide?
On May 8, 2026 the court answered a certified question about the unit of measure for minimum wage compliance and damages under Hawaii Revised Statutes sections 387-2 and 387-12. It held that the statute's per hour language is unambiguous: an employer must pay at least the minimum wage for each hour worked, and cannot average a worker's pay across the workweek the way some federal courts allow under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The court decided a question of statutory interpretation, not whether the resort did anything wrong.
Why does workweek averaging matter to a commission worker?
Under workweek averaging, a worker who earns a large commission on a busy Friday can have that money spread across every hour of the week, including unpaid hours spent waiting for clients, so the average clears the minimum wage and no violation appears. Measuring per hour removes that arithmetic: each unpaid or underpaid hour stands on its own. For a commission-only worker with long gaps between appointments, the difference between the two methods can be the whole case.
Who are the workers in this case?
The workers are massage therapists, estheticians, nail technicians, fitness instructors and hair stylists who provided services at Spa Grande inside the Grand Wailea on Maui. The operative complaint also reaches groundskeepers, facilities maintenance workers and window washers, and it pleads a separate California subclass tied to a salon at the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills.
What do the defendants say?
The defendants deny the allegations and have contested the case at every stage, including by moving to compel arbitration, moving to dismiss part of the complaint and challenging personal jurisdiction over an individual defendant. No court has found any defendant liable, and the claims described on this page remain unproven allegations.
Does the ruling affect other Hawaii workers?
It is a published interpretation of Hawaii's minimum wage statute, so it applies beyond this case. Any Hawaii pay structure that relies on averaging earnings across a workweek to clear the minimum wage, common where workers are paid by commission, by the piece or by the job while still being required to be on site, now has to be measured hour by hour instead.
