A Hawaii restaurant group illegally shared $58,855 of servers' tips among managers, the DOL said.
The 70 servers' tips were used to top up managers' salaries after the company cut them, per the DOL.
The restaurant paid $117,710 in taken tips plus damages to the servers following the investigation.
Servers at a restaurant group in Hawaii were illegally forced to share $58,855 in tips with managers whose salaries had been cut by the company, the US Department of Labor (DOL) said.
The DOL said DK Restaurant Group, which operates seafood, sushi, and steak restaurants in Hawaii, reduced managers' salaries by "at least" 25% when it reopened its locations after COVID-19 lockdown — then topped up managers' salaries using tips accumulated by 70 servers.
This violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the DOL said. The law stipulates that managers and supervisors are not allowed to keep staff tips "under any circumstances," including through tip pools.
US employers can pay tipped staff as little as $2.13 an hour, with tips bringing their take-home pay up to at least $7.25 an hour. In Hawaii, the minimum take-home pay for tipped workers is $10.10 an hour, with at least $9.35 of it coming from their employer.
"Customers' tips to restaurant staff for good service are the private property of those workers in the tip pool, such as servers, bartenders, and other front-line workers," Terence Trotter, district director of the DOL's Wage and Hour Division in Honolulu, said in a ...
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