2 Tennessee restaurants had to pay $270,000 to servers who were forced to share tips with dishwashers, the labor department says

• Two restaurants made servers give $5 in tips to dishwashers on Fridays and Saturdays, the DOL said.
• The restaurants in Nashville also failed to pay overtime rates and keep accurate records, per the DOL.
• The restaurants paid $270,751 in back wages to 82 employees following the investigation.

Two Nashville, Tennessee restaurants were ordered to pay nearly $271,000 to servers who were forced to illegally share their tips with dishwashers, the Department of Labor said.

Cilantro Five Points Inc., the operator of Cilantro Five Points Mexican Grill and Tequila Bar, and Cilantro Restaurant, asked servers to give $5 of their tips to dishwashers on Friday and Saturday nights, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division said in a press release on Friday.

Tipped workers in Tennessee, such as servers and bartenders, have to be paid a cash wage of at least $2.13 an hour by their employer, as long as tips increase their take-home pay to at least $7.25 an hour.

But these tips can’t come from a pool that is shared with staff like cooks and dishwashers “who do not customarily and regularly receive tips,” per the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The DOL said that the restaurants had paid $270,751 in back wages to 82 employees following the investigation.

“Restaurant industry employees work hard for their wages, especially for the tips they earn for good customer service. They depend to these tips to help make ends meet,” Lisa Kelly, district director in Nashville, Tennessee for the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement. “By federal law, tips belong to the people who earned them, and employers are prohibited from withholding or redirecting these earnings.”

As well as requiring servers to share tips with dishwashers, the restaurants failed to pay employees overtime rates of one-and-a-half times their usual hourly wages for hours worked over 40 in a week, the DOL said. They also didn’t pay all workers the correct minimum wage and didn’t keep accurate records of how many hours some employees worked, it added.

The restaurants did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.