A Few Notes When Talking About Tip Pooling.
What is tip pooling?
Tip pooling is when a portion or all of the tip money from the night is collected and redistributed evenly or by a set percentage — instead of each server keeping the tips they earned individually.
Non-tip pools
Non-tip pools are when individuals keep the tips given to them throughout a shift. Often an individual has to tip out bar and support staff a portion of what they earned that night while keeping the rest to themselves.
Why is tip pooling important?
Tip Pooling is essential because it can help fight against the biases that uphold unrecognized assumptions people carry that determine how some people are more deserving of tips while others are less. These biases include:
Racial discrimination
Studies show that Black service workers receive fewer tips than their white counterparts. Tip pooling is a way to combat your Black colleagues' external discrimination. Additionally,, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people are often the targets of racist troupes around laziness and hard work.
Ableism
Demanding that people keep up or adjust to the work culture of an establishment allows no room for an individual’s distinct abilities. Everyone cannot do the same amount or kind of work, expecting them to reinforce this discrimination.
People have a diverse set of learning and social capabilities. A common framework will “weed out the weak when discussing tip pooling.” This mentality leaves behind those whose tools for learning and social interactions may look different than yours. “Weeding out the weak” also can lead to bullying and a toxic work environment.
Individualism
The hospitality industry is a collaborative working environment. You can’t do it all on your own. But when we lean into believing that some people deserve fair pay and others don’t, we lean into thinking about the individual instead of the community. Further, this mindset leaves us burnt out, fighting over resources, and untrusting others.
The hospitality industry is a unique space where working as a collaborative community produces income for everyone involved. We only take from ourselves when these conversations center on what’s best for an individual instead of everyone involved. This infighting prevents solidarity that could further the working conditions for you and your coworkers outside of who deserves tips. No one is more or less deserving to have their basic needs met.
When we push back against discriminating policies, set boundaries, communicate clearly, and hold one another accountable, we can create a hospitality industry that works for us all.
Reframing
Communicate clearly.
What are your expectations?
Where are your coworkers doing well, and in what areas could they improve?
Don’t expect new people to “catch on” and have clear guidelines, procedures, and tools for learning and advancing.
Set boundaries.
One of the ways we can become frustrated with our coworkers is the belief that we are doing more or working harder than anyone else. A healthy work environment works for everyone, not just a few, and adjustments are expected, especially in fast-paced environments. If you consistently feel you are doing more work than others, perhaps it’s time to recalibrate how labor is divided in your space.
Shift the responsibility
When we aren’t making what we need to be, the blame is often placed on the employee or the scheduling. If the business is not generating enough to provide a livable wage to those working there, the business is failing, not the workers.
If the goal is to ensure everyone is making at least $24, you can look at the data to see what is going wrong, which could include things like needing to increase the cost of food, reducing the number of people scheduled for specific shifts, or cutting people earlier, etc. The responsibility is on the restaurant as an organization to think about what big-picture changes can be made to achieve this goal. When people have a concrete expectation of how much they will make that they agree to, they are also less likely to micromanage or resent each other based on the idea that "I'm working harder" because everyone is making the money they need to make.
Accountability
It’s ok not to trust those who have power over you and handle your money. Managers and anyone who is in charge of money should be double-checked. Humans make mistakes and miscalculations all the time. It should be normal to question each other.
If you pool tips or management deals with tips in any way, they must keep an access log of tips. You can ask to view this log and encourage your coworkers to do the same.
“Employers, managers, and supervisors may not take any part of a tip pool. The Department of Labor recently clarified tip rules for managers and supervisors... Managers and supervisors may also contribute to a tip pool. However, they may not receive tips from the tip pool.”
“Your employer may count only the actual tips you receive towards the tip credit. If you are pooling tips with other employees, this means the money you receive from the pool, plus the portion of your tips you keep, plus the compensation you receive from your employer must add up to at least the minimum wage. Your employer may not count the money you have to put into the pool, because you aren’t keeping that money.”
Resources
https://www.legalconsumer.com/wage-and-hour-law/topic.php?TopicID=5&ST=IL
