Baristas at a Kentucky coffee shop chain were forced to share their tip pool with managers, a violation of federal labor laws, authorities said.
Managers of Heine Brothers coffee shops would take tips when they worked the espresso bar as baristas, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Louisville business had allowed managers who worked barista shifts to participate in the tip pool since it was founded in 1994, the newspaper reported.
But starting April 30, 2021, the Fair Labor Standards Act made it so managers and supervisors are prohibited from sharing in tip pools.
Heine Brothers did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News on Jan. 26, but in December, the company told WHAS that it learned of the rule change in July.
“However, we want to be clear that Heine Bros store managers never took tips that would have otherwise gone to the baristas with whom they were working the espresso bar shift,” the company said in a statement provided to the outlet. “If the store manager was not working that espresso bar shift, another barista would have been part of the team working the shift.”
Authorities said the company also did not keep a record of its tips, and it mandated that tipped pennies were donated to charity — violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Heine Brothers has since paid $150,000 in back wages for 492 of its employees and $150,000 in damages, according to a Jan. 25 news release from the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour...
White House Dinner Shooting Update: False claims spread rapidly online after the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting incident involving 31 year old Cole Tomas Allen within hours, coordinate...