There has been an important development for tipped workers in the state of Connecticut. The Connecticut Supreme court has decided that delivery workers cannot be paid a tip credit instead of the full minimum wage rate. The norm had been that businesses like hotels and restaurants would pay its delivery workers the reduced minimum wage because they were earning tips, however, this recent decision points out that the law may have been misinterpreted all along. Delivery workers may have always been entitled to receive the minimum wage rate for all of the hours they worked.<\/p>\n
What brought this decision about?<\/strong><\/p>\n A recent case brought against a pizza chain by the Connecticut Department of Labor (CT DOL) rejected the idea that delivery workers are comparable to servers at a restaurant. The CT DOL determined that the service that delivery workers provided to customers was very limited in that they only interacted with them while handing off their food at the door. \u00a0They spent most of their time traveling to a customer\u2019s home and on other duties for which they were not able to earn tips. The pizza chain appealed the decision and on April 4, 2017, the Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed that the CT DOL had reached a reasonable decision. The labor laws did not intend for employees like delivery workers to be paid a tip credit as such a small portion of their day allowed them to receive gratuities.<\/p>\n