Judge: Tipped employees due at least $3.25 an hour

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Although the state labor department initially advised otherwise, a judge has ruled that food servers, bellhops and other tipped employees were due a pay raise when Missouri's minimum wage rose this year.

The ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce could result in several hundred dollars of back pay for each tipped employee whose boss relied on the state's faulty interpretation.

Missouri's minimum wage rose from $5.15 to $6.50 an hour Jan. 1 as a result of a ballot measure approved last year by voters.

Supporters of the law said tipped employees were entitled to a base pay of at least half that amount, or $3.25 an hour. But the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations originally advised on a Web site that tipped employees were due only the federal minimum of $2.13 an hour, so long as their tips pushed their total pay to at least $6.50 an hour.

That changed March 14, when Gov. Matt Blunt declared the department had gotten it wrong and ordered it to advise employers to pay $3.25 an hour to their tipped workers.

Several restaurants sued the labor department, seeking a declaration that the proper wage was $2.13 an hour, or alternatively asking to exempt them from providing back pay at the $3.25 threshold between Jan. 1 and the date of Blunt's decision.

Joyce rejected those arguments, dismissed the restaurants' lawsuit and said tipped employees were due $3.25 an hour from Jan. 1 onward.

The restaurants "cannot take advantage of initially incorrect advice from the department, especially in the face of a contrary statute and regulation, to obtain legal sanction for insufficient wages paid to tipped employees who were entitled to the full benefit of the minimum wage law," the judge said.

St. Louis attorney John Renick, who represented the restaurants, said Tuesday that the ruling likely would be appealed.

Renick said it seemed inconsistent for the department to offer advice, then change it based on a governor's order, then maintain its advice really didn't mean anything.

If the law and regulation were so clear, the department should have just referred people to the language of the regulation instead of offering its initial interpretation, Renick said.