After contentious negotiations and threatened government shutdowns, on March 23, the President signed the 2018 Budget Bill into law.  Of significance here, the bill resolved several longstanding regulatory issues.

The spending bill, includes an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which now prohibits employers—including managers and supervisors—from participating in tip-pooling arrangements, even where the employer does not seek to take the so-called tip credit and pays the employees the regular minimum wage rather than the tip-credit minimum wage, sometimes referred to as the “server’s wage” in the restaurant industry.  In other words, under the new law employers, managers and supervisors can never share in a tip pool and employees can never be required to pay any portion of their tips to employers, managers or supervisors.

The amendment also clarifies two (2) issues which have divided courts regarding the disgorgement of illegally retained tips.  While many courts have long-held that an employer who illegally requires employees to share tip with non-tipped employees (managers, supervisors, back-of-house and/or kitchen staff, etc.) must return all such tips to the employees, not all courts uniformly held as such.  The amendment clarifies that damages resulting from illegal tip pooling include a return of all tips to the employees.  The amendment also clarifies that employees’ damages include liquidated damages on all damages, including the disgorged tips, an issue which had previously divided courts and for which the Department of Labor had not provided guidance previously.

In light of the fervent anti-employee stance that the Department of Labor has taken under the current administration, this certainly must be celebrated as a victory for workers.  Indeed, the law replaces a proposed regulation which garnered much opposition for its pro-wage theft stance and which was recently discovered to have been pushed through the regulatory process based on intentionally incomplete information provided by Secretary of Labor.

Click amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act to read the full text of the new law.