
DC Attorney General sues DoorDash, claiming it pocketed workers’ tips - gamblor956
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/19/dc-attorney-general-sues-doordash-claiming-it-pocketed-workers-tips.html
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olliej
Because it did - and then it tried to claim adjusting the amount that the
deliverers were being paid by an amount that exactly matched the tip amount
was not wage or tip theft.

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londons_explore
I think doordash will win this one if they take it to court.

They were careful to word it as "take home pay guarantee". That guarantee
looks at the actual payment per delivery, plus tips, and makes it up to a
minimum.

It seems clear from all the marketing materials I've seen.

Doordash can simply argue this guarantee was _on top of_ the regular pay, and
was totally optional, and every contractor only stands to gain from this
guarantee.

I'm pretty sure the whole aim of this case is to crucify doordash in the court
of public opinion, despite their case being strong in an actual court of law.
My elected politicians shouldn't be allowing that - if there are gaps in the
law, address them directly!

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gautamnarula
I don't like/didn't like this practice from DD (I think they're finally
phasing it out after much criticism), but it worked exactly the same way
tipping at restaurants works, so that is a precedent they can call upon as
well.

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olliej
uh, what? It has been very well established that managers at restaurants
cannot offset your income or otherwise steal tips. It's possible your
confusing tip sharing, which is legal, but, and this is important, does not
allow the tips to be "shared" with the employer.

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indoortree
It's not "stealing tips" and it's literally written explicitly into the laws
around minimum wage in federal law in the US.

The federal minimum wage is set to $7.25 per hour, with a very clear exemption
for tipped workers, that the employer contribution only needs to be $2.13 per
hour as long as the tips bring the total wage up over minimum on a weekly
basis. If the employee gets lower tips, the employer is required to pay
additional wages to bring their total wages up to the guaranteed minimum. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage)

The problem isn't that DoorDash is doing some new, nefarious thing. They're
doing exactly the same thing a restaurant does when they pay a server
somewhere between $2.13 and $7.25 per hour depending on how customers tip. The
problem is that apparently most people don't understand how tipping and wages
for tipped employees have worked for traditional restaurants for decades.

~~~
olliej
But that isn’t what the tipping industry does. You are paid a certain hourly
wage, and if the tip income is below a certain amount the employer has to
_increase_ the wage to compensate. They cannot however reduce your hourly pay
rate _after_ you have done the work. Because that is tip theft, simply
reclassifying your income after the fact doesn’t magically make it not theft.

Because if that were allowed an employer could hire you at $20/hour (for
example), and then decide at the end of your day to change your pay rate to
$10/hour and that would be ok - because by your definition that isn’t wage
theft.

