Category Archives: Unpaid Overtime

The Fair Labor Standards Act authorizes employees who are normally tipped (such as servers and bartenders) to “pool” their tips together to determine who gets what percentage of tips. But the law is also crystal clear that the tip pool cannot be shared with people who are not normally tipped, such as assistant managers and chefs. The owners of the company certainly cannot be part of the tip pool.
A new FLSA lawsuit in the Southern District of New York accuses celebrity chef Mario Batali and his restaurant empire of taking out between four and five percent of the tip pool for management.
The amended complaint is here:
FLSA Lawsuit Against Mario Batali
Littler Mendleson is defending. Sarelson Law Firm has represented many restaurant employees who are not being paid properly through the tip pool.

A bunch of strippers have won conditional class certification in the Southern District of New York for unpaid overtime. As a threshold issue before the Fair Labor Standards Act could be applied, the district court judge concluded that the dancers were misclassified as independent contractors when they should have been classified as employees. The New York Law Journal has the story here. The blog does not have the certification order. Happy new year.