Employee Rights: Collecting Tips
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What are tips and gratuities?
Tips and gratuities essentially mean the same thing. In their basic definition, they are used to refer to money voluntarily left for an employee of a business that is more than exceeds the set amount owed for the sale of goods and services.
Gratuities and tips are given as a reward for excellent services and ranges from few cents to the large amount that customers are willing to give. The tradition of giving tips is an accepted practice that has been there for quite long.
How does California law protect tipped employees?
The California law and courts have for long acknowledged that for a customer voluntarily leaving behind tips is a reward for the service provided and thus employers have no right to withhold the amounts due whatsoever.
Under the Californian labor laws, code 351 prohibits employers or their agents from withholding or keeping any tip or gratuity willingly given to an employee. The laws go ahead to state that tips and gratuities are sole properties of the employee or employees and in the regard, none has the right to withhold them back whatever the reason.
Tips and gratuities are very common in the hospitality industry if you work in this industry the California law protects your interest in regard to tips and gratuities. For instance, the law does not allow a tip credit. Section of 351 of the labor code expressly prohibits employers from crediting any tip or gratuity against the wages due for an employee.
As stated before, the law defines tips and gratuities as sole properties of an employee or employees, so for all employers covered under this law are required to pay tipped employees their full wages regardless of the amount they earn from tips. Any employee who credits tips and gratuities to meet the minimum wage requirements are violating the law and as an employee, you need to take action against such violations.
The law also allows employees covered under this law to impose a mandatory tip/gratuity policy. According to Californian labor laws, a tip left behind by a customer belongs to all employees who directly make contributions to the delivery of service to the customer(s).
Additional Information
The employees can also, for instance, agree among themselves to share or pool tips or come up with any policy regarding the tips since they belong to all the employees. The law, however, exempts floor managers in charge of firing and hiring of employees from partaking in any tip and gratuity policing.