In states like Arizona, pay for tipped employees can be slightly more complicated than pay for other wage-earning workers. This is mainly because tipped employees in Arizona receive an hourly $3 tip credit, plus any tips they earn.
The $3 tip credit is never grounds for a restaurant to avoid paying tipped workers their full wages, including overtime.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for restaurants to fail to pay employees, including servers and kitchen staff, all of the wages the employees are owed.
However, many restaurant workers are not aware of their rights, and employment law violations do occur.
If you work at two locations of the same restaurant, your employer is required to add up all hours worked at both locations during the same week.
If you are an hourly employee who works more than 40 hours in a week, you are owed 1.5 times the rate of your regular pay for each hour worked over 40.
If you work more than 40 combined hours in a single week at two locations of the same restaurant, your employer is legally obliged to add up the hours correctly and pay you overtime wages.
Additionally, your employer may be responsible for paying you for the time you spent traveling from one restaurant location to the other.
Contact an Arizona employment law attorney if you have questions about any of these issues.
At Weiler Law PLLC, we advise and represent tipped workers, including servers, bussers, bartenders, valets and hairstylists.
We also help restaurant employees and other workers resolve minimum wage disputes and overtime pay disputes. To learn more, please see our overview of minimum wage and overtime claims. We represent clients in Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tempe, Tucson and throughout Arizona.