The US Department of Labor said that server at a restaurant group in Hawaii were forced to share their tips with managers whose salaries had been slashed.
The DOL said that DK Restaurant Group, which operates seafood, sushi, and steak restaurants in Hawaii, reduced managers' salaries by at least 25% when it reopened its locations.
The DOL said that this violated the fair labor standards act. Managers and supervisors can't keep staff tips under any circumstances.
US employers can pay tipped staff as little as $2.13 an hour with tips bringing their take- home pay up to at least $8.25 an hour. Minimum take- home pay for tipped workers in Hawaii is $10.10 an hour with at least $9.35 of it coming from their employer.
In Honolulu, the district director of the DOL's Wage and Hour Division said that customers' tips to restaurant staff for good service are the private property of those workers in the tip pool.
Trotter said that any attempt by management to misuse a portion of the tips is against the law.
The DOL recovered $58,855 in tips that were illegally taken. The restaurant group was fined for the willful nature of its violations.
The DOL has found that other restaurants have violated the FLSA by withholding tips and making employees participate in illegal tip pools.
According to the DOL, a burrito chain in New Hampshire included managers in its tip pool, which led to the department recovering $62,000 in tips.
A seafood restaurant in South Carolina had to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars to workers after the DOL said it forced them to participate in an illegal tip pool.
Illegal practices such as these could be helping fuel the industry's labor shortage as workers continue to leave in droves, according to the DOL.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was a rise in the number of workers quitting their jobs in the food-service industry. According to preliminary BLS data, the industry had 1.34 million job openings in April, up from 898,000 three years ago.
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