tip credit

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Co-authored by Robert Whitman, Joanna Smith, and Samuel Sverdlov

Joining a budding national trend, renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group last week announced that he will eliminate formal tipping at his restaurants starting in 2016. Meyer stated that the new policy, aptly named “Hospitality Included,” is meant to better compensate “back of house” staff, who…
Continue Reading Tip-Toeing Around Class Actions: Can a “No Tipping” Policy End Wage and Hour Litigation in the Hospitality Industry?

Arkansas-Co-authored by Abad Lopez and Noah Finkel

The two-step “send notice now/worry later” approach to FLSA collective actions — in which courts approve notice to potential collective action members under the lenient standard but comfort defendant-employers with the bromide of “don’t worry, we can revisit the issue at the decertification stage under a more rigorous standard” — continues to leave…
Continue Reading Out of the Pizza Oven, Into the Fire: Any Way You Slice It, Lenient Standard at Conditional Certification Stage Doesn’t Cut It

Co-authored by Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Jennifer A. Riley

Restaurant servers are some of the few employees to whom employers can pay less than the minimum wage.  This is because they receive tips from customers that, so long as those tips are large enough, often push an employee’s income well above minimum wage.  The FLSA thus allows an employer…
Continue Reading Court Batters “Dual Jobs” Claim And Finds That Servers’ Duties Do Not Require Minimum Wage

Co-authored by Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Matthew J. Gagnon

In a huge win for restaurant companies everywhere, Judge William Dimitrouleas of the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently decertified a nationwide collective action against Darden Restaurants, Inc. – the corporate home of such iconic brands as Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse – in Mathis …
Continue Reading A WRONG IS RIGHTED: DARDEN’S POLICIES VINDICATED IN DECERTIFICATION OF NATIONWIDE COLLECTIVE ACTION

N.D. Ind. Seal.jpgCo-authored by Arthur J. Rooney and Jeremy W. Stewart

When should a tipped employee no longer be treated as a tipped employee?  Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that restaurants cannot utilize the tip credit, or pay tipped employees a sub-minimum wage, if tipped employees perform any “non-tipped” duties, such as washing dishes or taking out the trash.  Earlier this week, a District…

Continue Reading District Court “Tips” The Scale In Favor Of Restaurants On Server’s Tip Credit Class Claim

TIPBlogPIc1.bmpAuthored by Alex Passantino

On February 29, 2012, the Deputy Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor issued Field Assistance Bulletin (“FAB”) [*] 2012-2, in which she sets forth WHD’s enforcement policy with respect to the 2011 tip credit regulations.  Readers of this blog will recall that in April 2011 WHD published…

Continue Reading Tipping the Balance in the Ninth Circuit

waiter.jpgCo-authored by C.J. Eaton and Michael Fleischer

On Thursday, June 16, 2011, several trade groups representing the restaurant industry filed suit against the Department of Labor (DOL) seeking to have revoked the newly amended FLSA tip credit regulations. 

As mentioned previously on this blog, the DOL issued new tip credit regulations on April 5, 2011, that made substantive changes…

Continue Reading Restaurant Groups Claims New Tip Credit Regulations Are Half-Baked

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Co-authored by Ariel Cudkowicz and Krista Pratt

Employers with tipped employees should take note of a new decision issued by the U.S.  Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which sets out a quantitative standard for determining whether the tip credit can be applied.  On April 21, 2011, the Eighth Circuit in Fast v. Applebee’s International, Inc. held that an…

Continue Reading Working for Tip Credit: Eighth Circuit Says Employees Must Spend 80%+ of Time on Tip-Generating Tasks

Co-authored by Alexander J. Passantino and Brett Bartlett

Fed Register.bmpAs mentioned previously on this blog, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has been in the process of finalizing regulations regarding the Fair Labor Standards Act.  Today the Wage and Hour Division published those regulations in the Federal Register.  The rules will be effective 30 days after publication.

Usually referred…

Continue Reading DOL’s FLSA Rulemaking Limits Fluctuating Workweek, Tip Credit