Wage & Hour Defense Blog : Wage & Hour Lawyer & Attorney : Epstein Becker Green Law Firm : DOL Enforcement, FLSA Coverage

By Kathryn T. McGuigan and Douglas Weiner

In a landmark decision upholding the validity of the employer’s mandatory tip pool, on February 23, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in Misty Cumbie v. Woody Woo, Inc. No. 08-35718. The court held that where the employer paid a direct wage of at least minimum wage to restaurant wait staff, requiring them to participate in a tip-pooling arrangement with other restaurant employees does not violate the Fair Labor Standards Act. (“FLSA”)..

The Oregon restaurant took no tip credit, rather paid its wait staff a direct hourly wage in excess of the applicable minimum wage requirement. In addition to their hourly wage, the servers received a portion of the daily tips, distributed to employees through a tip pool. The restaurant required the wait staff to participate in its tip pool that included all restaurant employees, except managers. The largest portion of the pool went to the kitchen staff, employees not customarily tipped in the restaurant industry. 

A server filed a class action lawsuit against the restaurant alleging that the tip-pooling arrangement violated the minimum wage, and tip provisions of the FLSA. In granting the restaurant’s motion to dismiss the case, the District Court found that there is nothing in the text of the FLSA that restricts employee tip pooling arrangements when no tip credit is taken, thus the restaurant’s tip pooling arrangement was valid. In a well reasoned opinion specially refuting the Secretary of Labor’s arguments submitted in an amicus brief, the Ninth Circuit affirmed citing the Supreme Court’s adage that an agreement is per se valid, “unless subject to statutory interference”.

The Cumbie Court held when an employer does not take a tip credit, it may lawfully require servers to participate in a tip pool with employees who are not customarily tipped. 

Although the court’s ruling appears reasonable and persuasive, it is not clear what the Department of Labor’s enforcement policy will be, or whether this court’s ruling will be adopted in other circuits. As this issue develops we will update this blog.

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By now, you are probably aware that the minimum wage under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act goes up to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Employers with operations in Florida know that this is four cents more than the current Florida minimum wage of $7.21.  Florida employers must pay the higher of the two wages.

But what's the minimum wage for tipped employees in Florida as of July 24th?  The answer is not as simple as you might think, and you might be misled by reading the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation web page on the minimum wage.  That web page states the new federal minimum wage, and also states that tipped employees must be paid a direct minimum wage of $4.19 as of January 1, 2009.  While that's not inaccurate as far as it goes, the AWI web page does not explain how much tipped employees must be paid in direct wages as of July 24, 2009.

First, some background.  Under the FLSA, employers are allowed to claim a “tip credit” toward satisfying state and federal minimum wage laws for their tipped employees. This means that tips are credited against, and satisfy a portion of, the employer’s obligation to pay the minimum wage.  Under the FLSA, if an employee retains all tips, and the employee customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips, an employer may pay a tipped employee not less than $2.13 an hour in direct wages if that amount plus the tips received equal at least the federal minimum wage. If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.  As the federal minimum wage increases, so does the federal tip credit; the direct wage that must be paid to the employee ($2.13) stays the same. (You can read an article I co-authored on FLSA tip credit and tip pooling rules here. )

Not so under Florida law.  The Florida Constitution  provides that "For tipped Employees meeting eligibility requirements for the tip credit under the FLSA, Employers may credit towards satisfaction of the Minimum Wage tips up to the amount of the allowable FLSA tip credit in 2003."  The FLSA tip credit in 2003 was $3.02, i.e. the difference between the minimum wage in 2003 ($5.15) and the reduced minimum wage ($2.13).  Therefore, under the Florida Constitution, the tip credit can be no more than $3.02.  So, in Florida, as the minimum wage increases, the $3.02 tip credit stays the same, and the direct wage that must be paid to the employee increases. As of January 1, 2009, the direct wage equals the Florida minimum wage ($7.21) minus the 2003 tip credit ($3.02), or $4.19.

As you can see, however, $4.19 is not enough as of of July 24, 2009, because under Florida law the maximum tip credit remains $3.02.  An employer that paid only $4.19, and took a tip credit of $3.02, would leave the employee four cents short of the federal minimum wage of $7.25.  So, as of July 24, 2009, Florida employers must pay their tipped employees a direct wage of no less than $4.23. 
 

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A report by the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, the federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and other labor laws, "is failing in that role, leaving millions of workers vulnerable," according to an article in today's New York Times.

One of the reports concerned the Division's office in Miami:

When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the division’s office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case.

The report concludes that "Labor has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn." 

Nowhere to turn? In Florida that's simply not true.  As anyone who pays attention to court filings can tell you, dozens of workers each week, many on the low end of the pay scale, file claims for overtime and minimum wage violations in Florida state and federal courts.  Indeed, as previously reported here, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, for the past five years the Southern District of Florida alone has averaged 28.7% of all Fair Labor Standards Act cases filed in the United States.  The notion that workers have "nowhere to turn" is absurd.  They need only turn to one of Florida's many wage-hour lawyers, who have turned wage-hour litigation into a cottage industry in the sunshine state.  Does the GAO not realize that the FLSA permits private lawsuits, and in fact encourages them through its fee-shifting provisions? Why would an employee need the Wage and Hour Division when he has the Shavitz Law Firm or The Celler Legal Group in his corner? 

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