Posted on 03/08/2024 7:33:54 AM PST by dennisw
Owners and managers at 10 Subway stores in Washington state illegally took money from staff tip pools, the Labor Department says. The stores also reduced staff's hours on their timecards to avoid paying overtime, the DOL said.
The stores have now given $196,000 in tips, overtime wages, and liquidated damages to 100 affected workers.
Owners and managers at 10 Subway stores in Washington state illegally kept $80,000 in staff tips, the Department of Labor says.
The stores, which were under common ownership, let owners and managers take part in the pools for tips left on credit-card payments, the DOL said in a press release on Tuesday. 100 workers lost out on tips because of this, the DOL said.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, business owners and managers are not allowed to participate in staff tip pools. Managers and supervisors can only keep tips that they receive directly for services provided solely by them. The stores also manually adjusted employee timesheets to make it appear that they hadn't worked more than 40 hours a week and didn't combine hours for staff who worked shifts across multiple stores in the group, the DOL said. They did this to avoid paying time-and-a-half overtime rates, per the DOL.
Following the DOL's investigation, the stores gave $80,528 in tips and $17,546 in overtime wages to the 100 affected workers, as well as the same amount in liquid damages, totaling just over $196,000.
The stores also paid $22,017 in civil money penalties for the willful nature of the violations.
Subway did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I worked for years- we kept our own tips- never had to share tips. Made put pretty well, but still was a nowhere job in rural areas.
Didn’t realize we were supposed to tip subway workers? Now that workers get what? $15-20 p/h, is tipping even a thing?
Tipping Subway employees is complete BS anyway, please do not do it. They are not paid the waiter/waitress minimum wage, which has always been around $2-3/hour (it may be higher now). They are not servers and are paid much higher wages, even then some factory workers. Do not tip Subway, or Starbucks, anything like that. They are already compensated for their labor.
Had a girlfriend in 1992 that worked at Subway. She made fantastic sandwiches.
It could be the owners classified them as tipped employees if they brought food to patrons who ate in the restaurant. I am not sure what DOL considers the legit classification of servers who work for reduced minimum wage plus tips.
So, that’s stealing.
I am sure many of here are curious. On average how much per week did you make in tips?
I am partial to Jimmy Johns. I live in a small city with a large university. Not sure how the local franchisee does it, but all the JJs seem to have college guys working there. And they are all in good spirits, almost like they are bartenders.
The experience is not "professional" like you might expect in other restaurants, but I get, "Hey dude, what's up?" "What are we makin' for ya today?" Just in general the workers talk to you like you might at a tailgate party instead. Like I said, I don't know how they hire for that. But it makes me a loyal customer.
They often do share tips with “back of the house” staff. But those staff are paid at a higher hourly rate. (At least that was the case when I worked at restaurants.)
“On average how much per week did you make in tips?”
If I recorded it, I don’t recall, but it allowed me to pay for trips home when school was out for vacations, etc. It was the 1960s, and my hourly pay was $.60/hour. I do remember that!
My first job was a maintenance person/painter at a drive-in theater for $1.00 an hour. What I remember most about that job was the showing of the movie “Night of the Living Dead.”
It was only to be shown for three nights but it was so popular we ran it for over a week.
I also have fond memories of my first boss-actually a husband/wife team.
Jersey Mike’s for those!🤗👍
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.