Tag: tips
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Labor Department Proposes New Tip-Sharing Rules
The Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has announced a proposal to allow some employers to use tip sharing among tipped and non-tipped workers, rescinding portions of the tip regulations in the Fair Labor Standards Act. The proposal would apply only to employers who pay the full minimum wage to…
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Projected Class Action Alleges Restaurant Groups’ Plan to End Tipping Is Conspiracy
Danny Meyer, David Chang, Jonah Miller, Tom Colicchio and other restaurateurs have been named as defendants in a putative class action that alleges a business strategy to eliminate tipping and replace it with a service charge of at least 20 percent is price-fixing and a conspiratorial restraint of trade that violates the federal Racketeer Influenced…
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Trade Groups Challenge DOL’s New Tip Pool Rule for Restaurant Employees
Restaurant trade organizations, an Oregon restaurant and one of its employees, a server, have filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief against the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), alleging that its interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, forbidding restaurants from distributing a share of tips to non-tipped employees, regardless of whether the restaurants…
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Starbucks Files Brief Seeking to Uphold Judgment in Tip Dispute
Starbucks Corp. has filed its response in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a dispute over tip sharing, asking the court to affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment in its favor. Lawrence v. Starbucks Corp., No. 11-3199 (2d Cir., brief filed February 22, 2012). Additional information about related litigation involving Starbucks baristas…
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Court Rules Tip-Sharing at Starbucks Violates Massachusetts Law
A federal court in Massachusetts has certified a class of Starbucks’ employees alleging that the company’s policy of requiring tip-sharing by baristas and their supervisors violates state law; the court also granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on that issue. Matamoros v. Starbucks Corp., No. 08-10772 (D. Mass., decided March 18, 2011). So ruling,…
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Tim and Nina Zagat, “Adding Fairness to the Tip,” The New York Times, December 13, 2010
Authored by the co-founders of the Zagat Survey, this New York Times op-ed examines a recent spate of class action lawsuits arguing that many prominent restaurateurs, including Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali, “are routinely cheating their workers by confiscating waiters’ and busboys’ tips to share with managers and other ineligible employees.” Tim and Nina Zagat,…
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Batali and Bastianich Targeted in New Restaurant Worker Lawsuit
Twenty-seven waiters, busboys and others at New York City’s Del Posto restaurant have reportedly filed a lawsuit against owner Mario Batali and partners Joseph and Lidia Bastianich, claiming that they were not paid a legal wage. The plaintiffs allege that the restaurant’s managers pooled workers’ tips in violation of state labor laws and wrongfully withheld…
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Restaurant Workers Sue Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich
Renowned restaurateurs Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich have reportedly been sued by workers in their East and West Coast restaurants. A complaint filed in late July 2010 by current and former employees of New York City’s Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca was amended to include a class of employees who work in five additional east coast…