Wage and Hour Defense Blog

On August 23, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its much-anticipated decision in Restaurant Law Center v. United States Department of Labor.  In one of the very first federal appellate court rulings since the Supreme Court overruled Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.  this year, the unanimous three-judge panel concluded that the Department of Labor’s 2021 Final Rule regarding tipped employees and the minimum wage, commonly known as the “80/20 Rule” or the “80/20/30 Rule,” is both contrary to the pertinent statutory text and  arbitrary and capricious.  As a result, the court vacated the rule.

Background: Minimum Wage, the Tip Credit, Dual Jobs, and 80/20

The Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”) allows employers to count a portion of tips received by a “tipped employee” toward satisfying the federal minimum wage obligation.  The statute defines a “tipped employee” as “any employee engaged in an occupation in which he customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips.”  That portion of the statute has been in place, largely unchanged, since 1966.  Whether an employee counts as a “tipped employee” determines whether the employer may pay a reduced hourly wage of as low as $2.13, so long as the tips suffice to make up the difference to minimum wage.  Employees who are not tipped employees must receive at least the full minimum wage directly from their employer.

In 1967, the Department of Labor issued a regulation positing that workers may have more than one job with an employer, one of which involves tips and one or more of which does not.  The example the Department used was a hotel employee who works some shifts as a server in the hotel restaurant and other shifts as the hotel’s maintenance person.  The so-called “dual jobs” regulation took the position that the employer may pay the lower hourly wage, known as taking the tip credit, for the time spent in the tipped occupation of server, but not for the time spent in the untipped maintenance occupation.

More than a decade ago, Epstein Becker Green (EBG) created its complimentary wage-hour app, putting federal, state, and local wage-hour laws at employers’ fingertips.

The app provides important information about overtime, overtime exemptions, minimum wages, meal periods, rest periods, on-call time, and travel time, as well as tips that employers can use to remain compliant with the law and, hopefully, avoid class action, representative action, and collective action lawsuits and government investigations. 

As the laws have changed over the years, so too has EBG’s free ...

On March 23, 2023, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed into law Senate Bill 73 (“SB 73”) expanding the group of employees eligible for tip pooling by allowing employers to include non-tipped employees in a bona fide tip pooling or sharing arrangement.

Historically, only “tipped employees” were permitted to participate in a tip pooling or sharing arrangement under Utah State law. This form of tip pooling is also allowed under federal law and is otherwise known as a traditional tip pool. A “tipped employee” is one who customarily and regularly receives tips or gratuities.”[1] Common examples of tipped employees include waiters and waitresses, whereas dishwashers, chefs, cooks, and janitors are examples of non-tipped employees.

The Washington, D.C. Council (the Council) has yet again taken action to delay enforcement of Initiative 82, the District’s new law to eliminate the use of the “tip credit” for certain service industry employees by July 1, 2027.

More than a decade ago, Epstein Becker Green (EBG) created its complimentary wage-hour app, putting federal, state, and local wage-hour laws at employers’ fingertips.

The app provides important information about overtime exemptions, minimum wages, overtime, meal periods, rest periods, on-call time, travel time, and tips that employers can use to remain compliant with the law—and, hopefully, to avoid class action, representative action, and collective action lawsuits and government investigations. 

We seem to say this every year -- December always seems to go by far too fast.  And with holidays and vacations, not to mention many employees still working remotely, it’s not unusual for matters to be put off until the new year — or for a project or two to fall through the cracks.

On Tuesday, November 8, 2022, Washington, D.C. voters approved a ballot measure to eliminate the “tip credit” which allowed service industry employers to pay servers, bartenders, and other tipped employees $5.35 an hour rather than D.C.’s $16.10 per hour minimum wage. Currently, employers are required to pay the balance if an employee is unable to make up the difference through tips. Initiative 82 will phase out the tip credit, raising the tip credit minimum wage to $6.00 in January 2023, and then to $8 on July 1, 2023, and then increasing by $2.00 every year until 2027. In 2027 ...

On June 28, 2022, Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee signed into law a comprehensive tip protection bill. The law, which took effect immediately upon passage, generally prohibits employers from retaining any portion of an employee’s tips.

On Friday, October, 29, 2021, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule regarding how to determine which tipped employees may receive a “tip credit” in lieu of receiving the full minimum wage directly from the employer. The new rule restores the “80/20” rule rescinded under President Trump, requiring employers to pay employees at least the minimum wage if they spend more than 20% of their time working on tasks that do not specifically generate tips such as wiping down tables, filling salt and pepper shakers, and rolling silverware into napkins, or duties referred to in the industry as “side work.” The rule goes into effect on December 31, 2021 and the change represents continuation of a pattern that has continued across administrations with Presidents adopting and rescinding the rule over the past three administrations.

As we previously reported, starting in 2016 the District of Columbia by statute gradually increased its minimum wage to $15.00 per hour, and its tipped minimum to $5.00, effective July 1, 2020. However, included in the statute were provisions for subsequent increases of both these rates based on the annual average increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban consumers in the Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. See D.C. Code §32-1003(a)(6) and (f)(2).  The D.C. Department of Employment Services (DOES) recently announced that pursuant to these provisions, effective ...

On June 21, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a new proposed rule related to when an employer may take a tip credit and pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees performing so-called tipped and non-tipped duties.  The proposed rule appeared in the Federal Register on June 23, 2021 and is open for public comment until August 23, 2021.  The proposal shows employers the new road that President’s Biden’s administration is paving, which is a sharp turn away from the Trump administration’s approach.

The Fair Labors Standards Act (FLSA) allows employers to pay ...

Upsetting what many considered settled precedent, a California Court of Appeal has held that a mandatory service charge may qualify as a “gratuity” under California Labor Code Section 351 that must be distributed to the non-managerial employee(s) who provided the service.

In O’Grady v. Merchant Exchange Productions, Inc., No. A148513, plaintiff, a banquet server and bartender, filed a putative class action against their employer for its failure to distribute the entirety of the proceeds of an automatic 21% fee added to every food and beverage banquet bill to the ...

Our colleague Jeffrey H. Ruzal at Epstein Becker Green has recently published a post on the Hospitality Labor and Employment Law blog that will be of interest to our readers: “U.S. DOL Announces Proposed New Rule on Tip Credits and Pooling."

Following is an excerpt:

The proposed rulemaking will codify the DOL’s recent guidance that an employer may take a tip credit for any amount of time an employee in a tip-earning occupation performs related non-tipped duties that are performed contemporaneously with, or within a reasonable time immediately before or after ...

As we previously shared in this blog, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) issued an opinion letter in November 2018 changing the Department’s position regarding whether and when an employer with tipped employees, such as a restaurant, can pay an employee a tipped wage less than the federal minimum wage.

The issue was whether an employer must pay a tipped employee the full minimum wage for time spent performing what the industry calls “side work”: tasks such as clearing tables or filling salt and pepper shakers that do not immediately generate ...

Featured on Employment Law This Week:  The Department of Labor (“DOL”) rolls back the 80/20 rule.

The rule prohibited employers from paying the tipped minimum wage to workers whose untipped side work—such as wiping tables—accounted for more than 20 percent of their time. In the midst of a federal lawsuit challenging the rule, the DOL reissued a 2009 opinion letter that states that the agency will not limit the amount of side work a tipped employee performs, as long as that work is done “contemporaneously” with the tipped work or for a “reasonable time” before or after ...

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), employers can satisfy their minimum wage obligations to tipped employees by paying them a tipped wage of as low as $2.13 per hour, so long as the employees earn enough in tips to make up the difference between the tipped wage and the full minimum wage. (Other conditions apply that are not important here.) Back in 1988, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division amended its Field Operations Handbook, the agency’s internal guidance manual for investigators, to include a new requirement the agency sought to apply to ...

Voters in the District of Columbia on June 19, 2018 approved an initiative (Initiative 77) that would incrementally increase the minimum cash wage for tipped workers to $15.00 per hour by July 1, 2025, and starting July 1, 2026 to the same amount as the then-minimum wage for all other workers, effectively eliminating the tip credit. If the initiative takes effect, the District would join seven states that do not have a separate minimum wage for tipped workers, i.e., Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

The D.C. Council previously enacted ...

A number of states and localities are about to implement mid-year hikes in the minimum wage. Below is a summary of the minimum wage increases (and related tipped minimum wage requirements, where applicable) that go into effect on July 1, 2018.

Earlier today, the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in cases involving the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) “80/20 Rule” regarding what is commonly referred to as “sidework” in the restaurant industry.  Agreeing with the arguments made by our new colleague Paul DeCamp, among others, the Ninth Circuit issued a decidedly employer-friendly decision.  In so doing, it disagreed with the Eighth Circuit, potentially setting the issue up for resolution by the United States Supreme Court.

As those in the restaurant industry are aware, restaurant workers and other tipped ...

In Romero v. Top-Tier Colorado LLC, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that tips received by a restaurant server for hours in which she did not qualify as a tipped employee were not “wages” under the FLSA, and therefore should not be considered in determining whether she was paid the minimum wage.

Tipped Employees & the FLSA

The FLSA provides that employers may take a “tip credit” and pay employees as little as $2.13 per hour if: (i) the tip credit is applied to employees who customarily and regularly receive tips; (ii) the employee’s wages and tips are at least equal to the ...

Over the past year, there has been an increased discussion of Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requirements for tipped employees. The courts have focused on a number of issues related to tipped employees, including addressing who can participate in tip pools and whether certain deductions may be made from tips. While the FLSA requires employers to pay a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in most cases, Section 203(m) of the FLSA provides that employers may take a “tip credit” and pay as little as $2.13 per hour to employees who customarily and regularly receive tips, so long as two ...

By Jeffrey Ruzal

President Obama has spent much of his second term zealously pursuing an increase to the current $7.25 federal minimum hourly wage. While it is not clear whether a federal wage hike is in the offing, many states have recently taken measures to increase their own minimum wage rates. Effective January 1, 2014, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have all increased their minimum wage rates. There are also five additional states, California, Delaware, Michigan ...

By Kara Maciel

Our national hospitality practice frequently advises restaurant owners and operators on whether it is legal for employers to pass credit card swipe fees onto employees or even to guests, and the short answer is, yes, in most states.  But whether an employer wants to actually pass along this charge and risk alienating their staff or their customers is another question.

With respect to consumers, in the majority of states, passing credit card swipe fees along in a customer surcharge became lawful in 2013.  Only ten states prohibit it:  California, Colorado, Connecticut ...

Our colleagues Kara Maciel and Jordan Schwartz, both of Epstein Becker Green, recently cowrote an article for PLC titled "Tipped Employees Under the FLSA."

Following is an excerpt:

Wage and hour lawsuits certainly are not new phenomena, but in recent years, service industry employees have increasingly made claims regarding tips and service charges. In particular, employers in states such as Massachusetts, New York and California have seen a surge in class actions involving compulsory tip pools and distributions of service charges to employees. Commonly targeted employers ...

By: Kara M. Maciel

The following is a selection from the Firm's October Take 5 Views You Can Use which discusses recent developments in wage hour law.

1. IRS Will Begin Taxing a Restaurant's Automatic Gratuities as Service Charges

Many restaurants include automatic gratuities on the checks of guests with large parties to ensure that servers get fair tips. This method allows the restaurant to calculate an amount into the total bill, but it takes away a customer's discretion in choosing whether and/or how much to tip the server. As a result of this removal of a customer's voluntary act, the ...

By: Kara M. Maciel

Earlier this month, we released our Wage and Hour Division Investigation Checklist for employers and have received a lot of great feedback with additional questions. Following up on that feedback, we will be regularly posting FAQs as a regular feature of our Wage & Hour Defense Blog.

In this post, we address a common issue that many employers are facing in light of increased government enforcement at the state and federal level from the Department of Labor.

QUESTION: “I am aware that my industry is being targeted by the DOL for audits and several of my ...

By Kara Maciel and Casey Cosentino

The restaurant and hospitality industries are no strangers to the tidal wave of wage and hour class action lawsuits. Restaurants and hotel operators located in states with employee-friendly laws like Massachusetts, New York, and California, are particularly vulnerable. This vulnerability was recently confirmed on April 30, 2012, when Texas Roadhouse, Inc. agreed to pay $5 million to settle a putative class action suit filed by wait staff employees from nine restaurants in Massachusetts.

In Crenshaw, et. al, v. Texas Roadhouse, Inc. (No ...

By Matthew Sorensen

Wage garnishment can pose a number of potential problems for hospitality businesses. This is particularly true where the employee whose pay is subject to garnishment receives tips. 

Garnishment is a legal procedure in which an employee’s earnings must be withheld by an employer for the payment of a debt under a court order. When faced with a garnishment order involving a tipped employee, the employer must determine whether all or part of the employee’s tips must be included in the amounts withheld under the garnishment order. This question turns on ...

By Douglas Weiner and Charles H. Wilson

In a recently reported case from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Applebee’s servers and bartenders alleged they spent a “substantial” amount of time performing non-tipped work, such as cleaning and maintenance, and, therefore, should be paid the minimum wage of $7.25 for the time spent performing non-tipped work, rather than the direct wage of $2.13 the FLSA allows employers to pay employees in tipped occupations See 29 U.S.C. § 203(m) and 29 U.S.C. § 203(t).

Applebee’s argued it properly applied a tip credit to the servers and ...

By Amy J. Traub

On December 16, 2009, Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to Starbucks Corp. (“Starbucks”) in a wage/hour lawsuit filed by former and current baristas of Starbucks’s coffee shops located in New York.

In their lawsuit, filed in April 2008, the New York baristas argued that Starbucks had violated state wage and hour laws by splitting tips intended for baristas with shift supervisors, handing out tips on a weekly basis instead of on a per-shift basis, and failing to distribute tips ...

By now, you are probably aware that the minimum wage under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act goes up to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Employers with operations in Florida know that this is four cents more than the current Florida minimum wage of $7.21.  Florida employers must pay the higher of the two wages.

But what's the minimum wage for tipped employees in Florida as of July 24th?  The answer is not as simple as you might think, and you might be misled by reading the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation web page on the minimum wage.  That web page states the new federal ...