A well-known central Texas barbecue restaurant was ordered to pay $230,353 in back wages for 274 workers when a Department of Labor investigation found restaurant managers were given a portion of employee tips.
Austin’s Black’s Barbecue Inc.; Kent Black’s Lockhart Barbecue Inc. and New Braunfels Barbecue LLC – all with the same ownership and operating as Black’s Barbecue restaurant – kept a portion of the employees’ tips, sharing them with managers in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a Sept. 19 news release.
“Food service industry employers must know that tips are the property of tipped employees who earn them, plain and simple," Wage and Hour District Director in Austin Nicole Sellers said in the release.
She said taking wages from employees also takes from their families, who depend on their rightfully earned wages and benefits, the release reported. Safeguarding all essential food service workers’ rights is a commitment by the Wage and Hour Division.
The division discovered about $35 million in unpaid wages owed to more than 29,000 employees of the food service sector in the fiscal year 2021, according to the release. The division frequently discovers violations in its food service investigations involving employers keeping tips, failing to pay overtime when necessary and failing to pay for pre- and post-shift work.
