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Tsukiji Fish Market at Ala Moana owes workers back-pay

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / JUNE 21, 2007
The exterior of Tsukiji Fish Market and Restaurant located at the Ala Moana Center.

The parent company of Tsukiji Fish Market restaurant at Ala Moana Center has agreed to pay more than $57,000 in tips and unpaid wages to 68 employees.

Paradise Inn Hawaii LLC was found, by the U.S. Department of Labor, to have unlawfully required servers to share tips with non-tipped employees, while still paying the servers less than the full minimum wage.

“Employers cannot take a lawful reduction or credit against their obligation to pay the federal minimum wage to servers while unlawfully requiring them to share their tips with traditionally non-tipped employees such as assistant managers and dishwashers,” said Terence Trotter, the division’s district director in Hawaii, in a statement.

In most states, tipped workers may be paid a lower wage that when added to customer tips, must equal at least the full minimum wage.

Servers at Tsukiji, however, were required to contribute their tips to what the DOL calls an illegal tip pool for all of the restaurant’s workers. That invalidates the employer’s ability to claim a tip credit, the department ruled.

DOL Wage and Hour Division investigators found that the 68 employees are owed $48,029 in tips and another $9,538 in back-pay.

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