NYS department of labor says that my employer is legally allowed to keep my tips for business expenses.
Location: New York. I worked for a real shitty restaurant for about 2 weeks. You know the type everybody’s a junkie-owners are banging the waitress ‘ and you can’t piss those waitress’ cause they’ll get you fired and they are always pissed off cause they have to bang some gross old dude.
After my training I got my first paycheck on there 2 percent was taken out of my *total sales*for credit card processing fees. So if I do 1000 dollars in sales I have to pay 20 dollars to the owners -regardless if it’s cash sell or credit card sale. I bring this up. I text them like hey this is illegal you can’t steal my tips. They text me back if you don’t like it quit. Cool here’s my 1 week notice. They said okay you’re fired. Ok well fk you guys. Here’s a a complaint to the department of labor standards.
Now I just wanted my ~90 buck back and hopefully they would have to pay back that 2% that they have been taking from people who’ve been working there for 5 years (15 employees *100 bucks a week* 5 years) also threw in retaliation. I Sent in the text messages/ sent in the receipts that says 2 percent of your total sales goes to credit card fees. Department of labor says cool we feel you’re owed 5k. Cool.
Employer asked for mediation— at mediation Jan 2026 I say I’d take 4k. Employer says zero and I say why the fk are we here then. The mediator agrees. They offer 1k. I turn it down as the dol has said in writing that they will represent me if we cannot mediate. Based on that belief I turn down the 1k. ( I really don’t want 1k. I them to have to pay that 2% over 5 years to all the people they’ve been stealing from) but 4k would have been nice.
This is where it gets weird. I had to go to a hearing against nys dol for unemployment. In Feb 2026 the administrative law judge orders the dol to turn over a documents related to a different dol lsi case. The department of labor ignores the subpoena from the judge stating their policy does not let them turn over documents….I won that hearing. My unemployment benefit rate was raised based on the missing wages and they paid me 2.5k in missing benefits.
Since then my access/ relationship with the dol has changed. Obviously, I use that service a lot. They have refused to provide me with another fair hearing unemployment —as my benefit rate is still wrong—and then I got the letter from labor standards in April saying that it’s okay for your employer to keep your tips for business expenses and that there was no retaliation.
The tip pooling part is that I had to pay our salaried manager a tip out- as well along with the bartenders. So I’d end up payee 6 ~ 8 percentage of my total sales. I love tipping out bartenders I throw them more fk it. Paying tips to my salaried manager not so much.
I have not seen the text message my x-employer sent -I’d assume they’d be the same I sent in —-there might have been some funny business with that but I think it’s more about the dol.
So my issues are:
I turned down the 1k on the belief that the department of labor would represent me.
Can my employer keep 2% of my total sales to pay for credit card processing fee as the dollar claims.
The department of labor standards is still refusing to turn over their documents.
Is there anything that can be done.