High Cotton Charleston Restaurant Hit with Wage and Hour Lawsuit

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The company that runs the High Cotton Charleston restaurant in South Carolina is the defendant in a proposed collective and class action filed by a former tipped employee.

According to the lawsuit, defendant Hall’s Southern Kitchens, LLC overstepped the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by requiring tipped workers to surrender a portion of their tips into a mandatory tip pool. While the practices of tip pooling and paying tipped workers at a reduced tip-credited hourly rate are not illegal under certain conditions, the lawsuit alleges that it is illegal to require tipped workers to contribute to a pool created to help with the costs of laundering work uniforms. The plaintiff claims that this is precisely what the defendant required of its tipped workers and that the individuals should have been paid at least the full regular hourly minimum wage, rather than at a lower tip-credited rate.  

From the complaint:

“[High Cotton Charleston] is aware or should have been aware that federal law prohibited it from taking a tip credit as to tipped workers who were required to participate in an improper, but mandatory, tip pool or who were required to reimburse [the defendant] for its operational costs, including the costs of weekly laundering of their mandatory work uniforms.”

The case goes on to claim workers required to participate in the tip pool paid tips to back-of-house employees who do not customarily and regularly receive tips.