I'm a bartender and am also an attorney. I have been out of law school for three years but still unable to find legal work. I have questions on a labor issue.
My question is this is it legal for an employer (e.g, a restaurant) to require you to sell traditionally "non-tippable items" (e.g. newspapers) and still pay you less than minimum wage. The reason I ask is the justification for the employer doing this seems dubious at best. They pay other employees at least minimum wage to do the same task because they do not receive tips. However, they "outsource" this task to the "waitstaff" when they don't feel like paying the normal help who gets paid minimum wage. The problem is selling these items drives up the sales of the waitstaff which drives up the amounnt of tips they are required to claim. This seems dubiously legal at best. In this fact pattern, it involves having to sell the "Daily Racing Form" at $7.50 per issue. Customers for the most part do not tip on this item because it's not worthy of a tip in most people's opinion yet it drives up the wages the bartender has to claim. Furthermore, the employer also pays other employees minimum wage or higher to do the same task but when the task is outsourced to the bartender the employer does not pay minimum wage. Furthermore, this employer has cited employees for "not claiming enough tips" (i.e. written warnings for not not claiming a sufficient tip amount to make up the difference between wages payed an minimum wage - the employee do not claim at least minimum wage in tips they claim they can fire said employee). Finally, for one of their venues, they will hire only people with Asian cultural backgrounds or from the continent of Asia. Employees have complained this is discrimination - the employer fires back not discrimination because it's "not for racial reasons" (you can be any color and have Asian cultural heritage) total malarkey because it's national origin discrimination.