The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday that employers may no longer collect tips from service employees and share them with support staff even if the tipped employees are receiving minimum wage. 29 USC § 203(m) [text] allows employers to use tips to apply to the minimum wage of an employee, called a tip credit if the workers are “customarily and regularly” tipped.
The court upheld a 2011 Department of Labor (DOL) [official website] rule limiting tip pooling to customarily tipped employees such as waiters because section 203(m) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 [text, PDF] was silent on the practice of tip pooling.
