Restaurants and bars are one of the great havens of our culture. Few things feel better than sitting at a table or on a barstool after a long week of stress and work. The food and drink are nice but it’s really the hard working restaurant professionals who create the environment that take that stress away. And when you leave a nice tip for one of those people you should feel confident that it is going to the right place.
Tips are incredibly important to people who are exempt from the $15.00 per hour Massachusetts minimum wage. They make up the vast majority of their income. While it is certainly legal for a restaurant to pay a tipped restaurant employee $6.75 an hour instead of $15.00 per hour, it MUST follow all the rules to keep that privilege. Massachusetts law forbids a restaurant from forcing employees to share their tips with managers or people with managerial responsibilities. Simply put, if you give your bartender a nice tip you don’t want them to have to share it with the person who is making their schedule, deciding who gets the good shifts and the bad ones. You don’t want them to have to share it with the person who decides who gets hired and fired. If a restaurant does that, it loses the privilege of paying them $6.75 per hour.
Janelle Nanos at the Boston Globe recently reported on our class action suit against Mecha Noodle Bar in which we are alleging exactly that. This is following in the growing number of suits like ours against Contessa and the Attorney General’s recent action against Zuma. It is truly a privilege to represent hard working restaurant professionals all over the city and we appreciate the Boston Globe helping us get the word out!
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