Office Quandries
Peter Rachleff
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Weekly Answers to Office Quandries |
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Professor Peter Rachleff |
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 You probably know that restaurant employees are exempt from many common workplace protections, for example, being paid minimum wage by their employers. However, I have always been curious about the practice of "tipping out." This is where employees, such as waitresses who are paid only a portion of the minimum wage, are forced to tip out (sometimes as much as 20% of their pay) other employees, such as bartenders and busers who may or may not make the minimum. Can an employer really force workers to pay each other? Shouldn't the employer be the one compensating its workers, and shouldn't tipping out be up to the employees? I also know of restaurant owners who take a share of the workers' tips. We all know this is not nice, but is it illegal?
Pennsylvania
In the first place, there are some interesting differences between Minnesota, where I am, and Pennsylvania, where you are. We've had some decent legislation here, though of course, it is not always uniformly enforced. |
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Your letter interested me because I have been involved recently with a group of restaurant workers who have been fighting an employer's efforts to impose "tip pooling," as we call it here in Minnesota. This has led to a battle to unionize his restaurant and has attracted considerable community attention. I suspect this sort of thing -- trying to get hospitality workers to pay other workers and thereby subsidize their employers-is becoming more and more common.