Life is hard. Your job is draining. The weather sucks. Politics wear you down. Getting a small escape from that is why bars and restaurants are an essential part of our culture. Even when you don’t feel great it’s nice to walk into a place where your friendly neighborhood bartender, server, or support staff can make you feel welcome and appreciated. Saban Legal Services P.C. is proud to support those people. In a hard fought battle that took 17 months to conclude, in December of 2024 Saban Legal Services reached a settlement agreement to resolve claims on behalf of 68 current and former employees who worked at Major Food Group restaurant Contessa in Boston. Since that settlement Saban Legal Services has successfully gotten checks to all 68 employees. Major Food Group denies any admission of wrongdoing or liability via these settlement agreements.
Saban Legal Services first came across this case when multiple Contessa employees noticed that a 3 percent fee was allegedly being taken out of their tips. Contessa operates as a “pooled house” in which all tips generated by employees are put into a single pool and distributed based on a points system. The Massachusetts Wage Act and Massachusetts Tips Act require that tips subject to a tip pool may only be paid out to tip eligible employees. This means that tips cannot go to any place that is not a tip eligible employee, be it an employee with managerial experience, a credit card company for fees, or a back of house kitchen employee. In investigating this case we found that tips were allegedly being paid out to ineligible back of the house kitchen staff for a period of 15 months. On top of this, we also found that Major Food Group was allegedly shorting the tip pool by sometimes thousands of dollars in certain pay periods. All of this is violative of Massachusetts law.
When an employer pays out pooled tips to non eligible places it also loses it’s ability to pay tipped employees the tipped minimum wage. The current minimum wage in the state of Massachusetts is $15.00 per hour. However, tipped employees, subject to many restrictions and regulations, may be paid only $6.75 per hour. Simply put, if you are paying out pooled tips to people or places who aren’t allowed to receive tips, you must pay your employees $15.00 for all hours worked instead of $6.75.
Long story short, we were able to get 68 hard working industry professionals paid for their work. These employees are your neighbors. They are an incredibly diverse population from all over the world speaking dozens of languages who have dedicated their lives to making sure you have a good time when you come to their restaurant. These are the people who do their absolute best to create a welcoming environment so you can have a nice glass of wine and forget how tough the outside world is. When you leave them a tip you should feel certain that it is going to the people you intended it to go to.
If you or anyone you know has questions about tips, tip pools, hours, minimum wage, overtime, or any other problems at your job, send us an email and we would be happy to chat.
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