A Florida sushi restaurant has divided up hundreds of thousands of dollars among its staff, after it was caught illegally forcing servers to split their tips in a way that violated federal law.
Officials announced in April that they'd recovered more than $262,322 from the owners of Ginza Japanese Restaurant in Fort Myers, where the owners were found to have been forcing servers to "tip sushi chefs, owners and managers based on the servers' total sales," according to the U.S. Department Of Labor.
Officials say the owners couldn't account for $22,000 in tips that were supposed to be paid to its 75 servers, and that management failed to pay their workers a regular rate with proper overtime. They've since recovered $262,322 in "hard-earned tips," wages and damages for the servers affected.
“Tips are the property of the employees who earn them. No employer has the right to keep any tips unless they are given directly to the manager who directly serves a customer,” Nicolas Ratmiroff, the DOL's Wage and Hour Division District Director in Tampa, said in the news release.
“This case shows that when an employer handles tip pools improperly, they may no longer apply a tip credit which can lead to an employer owing employees significant back wages and damages.”
Restaurant manager Joshua Salinas recently told the Fort Myers News-Press that things have been "all cleared up" in the wake of the incident, and the restaurant's tipping structure has been solid for the last year.
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