Surly settles $2.5 million class-action lawsuit

I think that was fair as the front line probably made less than minimum wage and tips were best distributed amongst them.

 

Not much to say here. Court interpreted that they ran afoul on state law. There are a lot of employment practices lawsuits that sound frivolous but this does not fall into that category for me. If I ran a business in MN with tipped employees I’d certainly review the ruling and my tipping policy.

Not a bad payday for the plaintiff attorney for 12-24 months work.

I always wondered about tipping in cash vs credit. I usually ask the bartender if it makes a difference. I guess in some cases it does.

 

140 x $11600 = $1.6M

The attorneys are getting about $800k out of this. Crooks.

 

That's not accurate. Under Minnesota law, unlike in many other states, there are no tip credits against the minimum wage. All employees receive at least the minimum wage as a base (and the minimum wage is not lower for tipped employees), even if they also receive tips, and tips accumulate on top of the minimum wage.

 

Good to know. Wyoming doesn't and I always thought...that ain't right.

 

Perhaps it's something reactionary in my DNA but I dislike the idea of management having any hand in pooling tips.

 

All lawyers should be paid by the hour and in contingency cases have their time slips approved by the Court. Just because a case kicked around in my office for a year or two doesn't mean that's the only thing I was working on.

 

Agreed. The problem is without the BS priced lawyers and the inflated cost they can get, the employees wouldn't get anything. System kinda sucks...

Glad to see Surly get the finger in this one. Tips are for the people who earn them, the actual worker, not the d-bag of a boss who steals from the underpaid.

Another nail in the coffin....

 

The service industry and minimum wage laws in the United States are still tied into tipping. Employees complain that they aren't being fairly protected at Surly. Surly pays $2,500,00 in damages for forcing employees into a policy that protects other employees. The servers get $11,600 each. The lawyers get $833,333. The barbacks no longer like the bartenders. Surly's costs are going to come from where? And this is all intertwined with Trump vs Obama. Welcome to America! (business as usual)

 

Agree with bad feelings all around. Too bad this required a lawsuit. The lawyers were the only longterm winners in this one.

On a related note, I was in St. Paul two weeks ago for business. I visited another brewery and there were at least three current or ex-Surly employees working there. I was surprised at their unhappiness with Surly. Now I understand at least a little bit of the back story.

 

I believe there's been plenty of drama at Surly, but I'm just saying that with vague recollections of other stories over the years. If you read the comments in the linked article, someone mentioned how Surly has adopted a policy of adding a service fee to orders at their pizza restaurant. I'm guessing this is done to allow them to have even greater flexibility with the money that would ordinarily be the tip money (and I'm assuming legally). From bad to worse?

 

That's weird, I read the whole article and saw no mention of President Trump or Former President Obama. Why are you injecting politics into this?

When I worked for Red Robin we had Tip pooling and it was a terrible practice. I had to pay out a fixed percentage of my sales to other people regardless of how many tips I got to keep myself (it was based off gross sales). So when you made good money you had to give a bunch of it away. During slow shifts, there was no tip sharing, but I made effectively $4-6 an hour because of all the extra work they made you do (paid only at your base rate of $2.13/hr).

 

So apparently lawyers should just work for free. Their labor is worth zero, the greedy fucks.

And another instance of Surly's management being douchebags. Between this and the way they treated Todd, they've fallen quite a few pegs in my book. I'm sure they're losing sleep over that.

 

I'm not. This story has to do with the legal issues of tip-pooling. Surly isn't paying a penalty for simply having an unpopular policy. The legality of tip-pooling is very much in flux at the moment due to the Department of Labor and changes being made under the different administrations.

 

The Surly matter was decided on the basis of Minnesota state law and by a Hennepin County Fourth Judicial District judge. It had nothing to do with the Federal Department of Labor.

 

I get that. My post was just painting a loose picture of this incident and the bigger picture, with my tongue slightly in my cheek.

 

So how does Surly cough up this kind of money? Legal liability insurance? Still privately owned, I guess. Now a slight increase on Surly Brands?
Full disclosure: My son passed the Wisconsin Bar last year. Now a greedy fucking lawyer. He worked his ass off and is currently $80+K in debt. Going to be awhile before he hits the "greedy fuck" level.

 

One case should do it!