A quick synopsis: My girlfriend is employed as a bartender. She is required to be at the bar at 10am(the bar opens at 11), and she leaves the bar area (typically) at 6pm to do inventory/cashouts etc. Usually she clocks out at 6:45-7:15.
As most of you probably know, wait/bar staff make 2-3 bucks an hour. This particular establishment also takes the amount of food/beverage sold, and applies a % of that onto each check as income as well. The result is that for working 5 days a week, her checks are around $30 after taxes. She usually waits until she has several of these and takes them to the bank at once and pays them basically no mind ( I find them tossed everywhere). This will explain the lack of attention she pays to these checks, which accounts for the question.
Today, I was helping her fill out some paperwork for health insurance, and as we looked back, she is actually only being paid for 7 hours of work for each day she is scheduled. If she clocks in at 10, and leaves at 7:15, instead of being paid for 9 1/4 hours, she gets 7(they are not allowed any breaks or lunch). They REQUIRE the barstaff opening each morning to be there at 10. I see several advantages to this…the employees don’t get to take a lunch hour, the employer doesn’t have to offer any types of insurance/workmans comp/etc(since 35 hours worked is part time), and the employer saves money by not paying for hours worked.
We are in Florida (an at-will state), so I’m not sure this is illegal…however, it IS a “gentelman’s bar” so nothing would really surprise me.
First of all, to find out the correct answer to this question, you need to speak to a Florida attorney, who specializes in labor law issues of this kind. You might try the state’s department of labor, which might have a different name. The state’s official website would likely point you in the right direction quickly.
I just wanted to offer some general advice:
Part-time workers are almost always covered by workers’ compensation. It’s a benefit that attaches to all employees. Providing her with health insurance would be a different matter. Probably for a bar they don’t even have to offer it to full time employees; it isn’t a requirement for employers to offer it, you know.
In general, if she is paid on an hourly basis, she should be compensated for the time she is required to be at work. In most states, an employee working 7 hours in a shift is required to be allowed a lunch (often 30 min. minimum), and often a break as well (some states require two breaks for that long a shift). If the lunch period is uncompensated, that may account for some of the discrepancy.
There may be other reasons she isn’t entitled to more than she is getting. However, she should ask the employer about it. If they aren’t paying her for all the hours she is working (which can include more than just being behind the bar), they are possibly, even probably in violation of state labor laws. Possibly, they haven’t realized what the right and left hands are doing; possibly they are simply trying to get away with it as long as they can. Who knows.
But if she is unsatisfied with the answer she receives, she should see an attorney to discuss the issue with specifics; absent a thorough grounding in Florida labor law, and the details of her situation, nothing I or anyone else here can say would be very valid should it contain any conclusions.
This isn’t my area of the law, and I don’t know the ins and outs of the issue, particularly with regard to tipped service staff, but the U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a decision IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez [PDF File] discussing the extent to which an employer was required under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, to pay for certain work time preliminary and post-liminary to productive work. Reading it may give you some ideas.
