The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published a new rule on tip pooling last Friday that subject employers to more significant monetary penalties for mishandling workers’ tips. Under the previous DOL regulation, put in place during the Trump administration, an employer could be subjected to civil penalties if the employer’s action of mishandling or illegally…
Read More »Along a similar line, a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of California has dismissed a lawsuit brought by One Fair Wage (an SEIU-sponsored advocacy group associated with the Restaurant Opportunities Center), ruling that the organization did not have standing to bring the complaint. The suit, filed against Darden Restaurants, alleged that the…
Read More »It seems there are some out there who refuse to acknowledge that the tip credit and the minimum wage can and should be allowed to peacefully co-exist. As a case in point, in the wake of President Biden’s Executive Order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour, DOL issued a proposed…
Read More »Last week on a straight party-line vote of 26-15, the Delaware General Assembly passed legislation, already approved by the state senate, that will incrementally raise the state minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. The proposal, which Governor John Carney is expected to sign, makes the President’s home state the latest to adopt a…
Read More »Call it the “Final Rule” that isn’t, as the Department of Labor has now delayed the implementation of its Final Rule on tip pooling under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Tip Regulations Final Rule was just finalized in late December and was set to become effective on March 1, 2021. However, in one…
Read More »Democratic representatives in Congress made good on promises to file legislation increasing the federal minimum wage this week with The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 being officially filed. As we know there was much talk during the campaign on the democratic side – from President Biden as well as several reps and senators –…
Read More »Underscoring the importance of who’s calling the shots at the NLRB, DOL and other federal departments during the transition from the Trump to the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) this week announced that it was withdrawing three opinion letters that address compliance issues related to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The…
Read More »With the signing of H.5250, the omnibus Economic Stimulus bill on January 5, the last day of the legislative session, our decade-long effort to correct the Massachusetts tip pooling law finally bore fruit. Governor Charlie Baker last week signed the legislation into law including a critical provision amending the statutory definition of wait staff employee…
Read More »The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued its long-awaited Final Rule addressing who may share tips under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the circumstances under which employers may use a tip credit. It will become effective on March 1, 2021, 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The Final Rule implements a 2018 amendment…
Read More »Almost a full year and a half ago, the US Department of Labor (DOL) officially rid the federal regulatory bureaucracy of the so-called 80/20 Rule, which governed minimum wage calculations and requirements for tipped employees when they perform ‘non-tip’ functions. Since then however, individual states have sought to adopt their own versions of the 80/20…
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