I am a waitress in South Carolina, at the end of every night I have to give back my credit card tips for the night. If the resturant is not clean, the mangement takes away part of these tips (usually 5-10 dollars). The resturant cleanleness is up for debate, we feel as if management is being unfair.

Can they take tips? The is significant debate about this where I work, any answers would be appericiated.

Wow...that's a great question. The answer is...it depends. What is your hourly wage? If your employer is paying you $5.15 per hour or more, then the federal government doesn't count your tips as wages. (They are still subject to taxation, however.) While it is not a good employee relations practice, it is still legal, as far as employment laws are concerned.

If your employer is paying you less than $5.15 per hour (which is legal in many places, including South Carolina, so long as the total of your pay (no less than $2.13 per hour) and your tips is at least at the minimum wage rate of $5.15 per hour), the employer may be placing his / her ability to pay you that lesser wage in jeopardy. This is because the law says that the lesser amount of pay is legal...only if the tipped employee retains all of his/her tips.

If I was the employer and I was determined to take a deduction for unsatisfactory clean-up, I would have handled it differently. Instead of deducting it from the tips, I would require, as a condition of hire, employees to agree to a deduction in pay in the specified amount anytime the restaurant isn't cleaned. This is also legal, so long as the employees are at least at minimum wage.

On the other hand, as the employer, I wouldn't have such a deduction at all...what a downer. I'm sure that the customers who leave the tips are not expecting the management to take some of it.

I'm curious as to what your specific wage rate is so please respond back to me. Good luck and let me know if I can answer any other questions for you.

My pay rate is $2.13 an hour, most nights I have more than $30 dollars in tips, reaching the federal minimum wage, but not ever night. Any help would be appericiated.

Overtime is calculated on a weekly basis in South Carolina. So, as long as your weekly average wage (which include collected tips and your base pay) is over the minimum wage, the practice of deducting from tips is legal so long as your employer notified you of the deduction and the reason for the deduction at least seven days before the deductions began, it is legal.

Your employer may take the stance that you were notified at the time of hire.

Best of luck to you. Let me know if you have additional questions that I can answer.

The restaurant/company I work for recently switched from allowing us nightly to convert our credit card tips to cash ... to rolling our credit card tips into our paycheck and we are only able to take home cash tips that we receive. Is this legal?
I think it is a way for the company to make interest off our money or to invest in the stock market.
Anybody have any words of wisdom?
I am frustrated by the fact that 85% of my tips are on credit cards and I have to wait 2 weeks to see my money as a tipped employee.

As long as you get them in full in a timely manner, which you seem to be, that is not illegal. There is no law that requires credit cards tips to be converted to cash on a nightly or any other basis.

:mad: My boss (the chef) has his own (small) company and makes us 2 waitresses do dishes and whatnot and yells at us if we dont do them . If the 3 of us are working on a busy night we have to split the tips by 3. Should my boss who is making all the profit from the food be taking our tips too ? I dont think this is fair.

Movich21, what state do you work in?

LConell, I disagree with you. According to the www.dol.gov/esa website, it plainly states (and I quote):

Allow the tipped employee to retain all tips, whether or not the employer elects to take a tip credit for tips received, except to the extent the employee participates in a valid tip pooling arrangement.

It goes on to state:

Retention of tips: The law forbids any arrangement between the employer and the tipped employee whereby any part of the tip received becomes the property of the employer. A tip is the sole property of the tipped employee. Where an employer does not strictly observe the the tip credit provisions of the Act, no tip credit may be claimed and the employees are entitled to receive the full cash minimum wage, in addition to retaining tips the may/should have received.

So, no, the management cannot take any part of her tips for the "cleanliness" of the restaurant. I worked in the restaurant industry for a number of years and I would never have tolerated this situation.

no it is not illegal to roll credit card tips into your paycheck. It's a pretty common practice. Not only that, if an employer must pay a credit card company a percentage on a sale, the employer can pay the tipped employee the tip received, minus that same percentage. The amount due must be paid no later than the regular payday, and the employer cannot wait to pay the employee while awaiting reimbursement from the credit card company. :)

You might want to take a look at the dates of the posts you are responding to. Lillian Connell, the former moderator of this forum, has not posted here since early July.

On credit card charges, I understand the need for my restaurant to deduct from my tips the cost of liquidating my tip into cash. However, my restaurant charges 3% of the total bill and deducts that from my tips. Is that legal?

You will get a better response if you start a new post.

New thread started - see http://www.laborlawtalk.com/showthread.php?t=184605