Minimum wage tip top-ups

There’s been a lot of talk in the UK recently about this loophole in the law that allows companies to pay employees below the minimum wage (£5.52 per hour) and use credit card tips to top up salaries.
Staff who work for the Restaurant Group, owner of Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito, Garfunkel's and Blubeckers, are even being threatened with the sack if they don’t encourage customers to pay by credit card. Managers may also face disciplinary action if they don’t enforce this company policy. They have also been told that under no circumstances must they reveal to customers that tips go towards topping up wages.
Staff at Georgetown, a chain of "colonial Malaysian restaurants", have been told that if a customer asks about tips they must say “Yes, we get the tips”, but one waiter said anonymously that all cash and credit card tips are taken by the management, not a single penny goes to floor staff. Owners of Georgetown, Pearl Hotels and Restaurants Ltd, also own The Coconut Lagoon restaurant chain and is run by Kumar Muthalagappan. Shame on you Mr Muthalagappan (I was so tempted to call him something else then).
Pizza Express takes an 8% cut of credit card tips, claiming it as an admin fee, but insist they’re not as bad as other chains who pay below the adult minimum wage. Chains like Zizzi for instance. A former manager for Zizzi said "They pay £4.25 per hour and all credit card tips are used to boost staff up to the minimum wage. I left because I found it disgusting”. Round of applause for that guy/girl! But the Pizza Express employee who revealed that the chain takes 8% of credit card tips as an admin fee has since been sacked.
Coincidentally, Zizzi and Pizza Express are both owned by Gondola Holdings. Hmmmm......
La Tasca is also another culprit, paying their staff £5.05 an hour then using credit card and cheque tips to top up their wages.
And the Nobu Group, part-owned by Robert De Niro, doesn’t give the floor staff a penny of their credit card tips. One bill was for over £1000 with a £150 service charge and an extra £100 tip on top of that, but the waiter recieved nothing.

So to sum that up, avoid paying by credit card in:
Pizza Express
Tootsies
Frankie & Benny’s
Chiquito
Garfunkel’s
Blubeckers
Carluccio's
Cafe Rouge
Zizzi
Georgetown
La Tasca
Nobu
and The Coconut Lagoon.

There are some good guys though:
Pizza Hut
Harvester
All Bar One
Toby Carvery
Blackhouse
Gusto
Rick Stein
Fifteen.

I’m not sure what the situation is in the rest of Europe and the world. Someone enlighten me. I seem to remember hearing that Starbucks in America had to pay some ridiculous amount of money to compensate employees for tips they hadn’t recieved. It’s not really a tip if it isn’t on top of your wages, it it? lol.
Does anyone work for any of these companies? Is it really that bad?
Some companies pay almost as little as £3 before tips. It’s immoral to say the least. Hopefully the law will get changed so restaurant slaves aren’t literally earning a slaves wage.

Minimum wage - Investigations

Tags: pay, wages, companies