Tipped workers

Tip rules are strict — and often broken.

Federal and state law tightly regulate how employers can pay tipped employees and how tips may be shared. Employers who take a tip credit must meet specific requirements. Tip pools must follow strict rules about who can participate. When those rules are ignored, workers lose money that should have been theirs.

Common violations include improper tip pools that include managers or non-tipped staff, failure to pay the full minimum wage when the tip credit is lost, and requiring tipped employees to perform substantial non-tipped work while still paying only the tipped rate.

Issues we regularly see

• Improper tip pools that include managers or back-of-house staff
• Employers keeping tips or using tips to cover business costs
• Failure to pay full minimum wage when tip-credit requirements are not met
• Tipped employees required to do significant non-tipped work at the lower tipped rate
• Related overtime and wage issues that often travel with tip claims

These cases can be individual or collective. We evaluate the facts carefully and pursue the claims that have real leverage under the FLSA and applicable state law.

We handle these cases on a contingent-fee basis. In most wage-and-hour cases the law also allows us to seek our fees from the employer.