Columbia restaurant under-paid employees who had to split tips, class-action suit says
Two former servers at a Columbia restaurant are suing their former employer for back pay, alleging the restaurant violated federal labor law concerning tips.
Backstreets Grill, located on Devine Street, faces a class-action lawsuit that says it underpaid tipped employees who were required to share their tips with non-tipped employees.
Julia Wolff and Aaron DeVillanueva worked as Backstreets servers from June 2019 to December 2019, according to the lawsuit they filed Aug. 30 in federal court in Columbia. In the suit, they claim they were paid less than minimum wage by the restaurant and that as tipped employees, they were required to pool their tips to be shared with other non-tipped employees.
This arrangement, the lawsuit alleges, violates the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to federal labor law, employers may pay as little as $2.13 per hour to employees who regularly receive tips, as long as the hourly pay plus tips add up to at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Those employees can be required to pool their tips with other regularly tipped employees.
However, the tip pool arrangement “may not include employees who do not customarily and regularly received tips, such as dishwashers, cooks, chefs, and janitors,” according to a fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Labor regarding tipped workers. If tipped employees are required to split their tips with non-tipped employees, then the employer’s so-called “tip credit” — the exception that allows them to pay less than minimum wage — is invalid.
According to the labor department, if an employer wrongly requires tipped workers to split their tips with non-tipped workers, then the employer should pay those tipped employees the full $7.25 minimum wage and reimburse them “the amount of tips that were improperly utilized by the employer.”
The plaintiffs suing Backstreets are seeking three times the amount of the wages they say they were shorted — an amount that is not calculated in the lawsuit — in addition to attorneys’ fees and a court order requiring the restaurant to follow federal labor laws. Along with Wolff and DeVillanueva, the class-action suit opens the door for anyone who worked as a tipped employee at Backstreets in the last three years to join the suit seeking back payment from the restaurant.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorney Bruce Miller of Charleston. Miller declined to comment, saying he does not comment on active litigation. A Backstreets representative did not respond to requests for comment.
Backstreets Grill is a spinoff from the same-named restaurant in Hickory, N.C., owned by the same family. It opened on Devine Street in 2019 in the space that formerly housed Tallulah restaurant and the long-running Dianne’s restaurant.
