Unite launches campaign for fair pay and tips in hospitality sector
Unite the union, representing thousands of hospitality workers, has launched a nationwide campaign to ensure that workers in the lowest-paid sector receive fair pay and tips.
The campaign comes ahead of new tips legislation effective from 1 October and will focus on educating workers about their rights and providing the support and tools needed to enforce them collectively.
The campaign will also expose employers who ignore or distort the new legislation or suppress wages to boost profits.
The Employment (Fair Allocation of Tips) Act will affect over four million workers who receive tips or service charges. It will require employers to hand over 100% of all tips (card, cash and service charge) in a fair and transparent manner by the end of the next month. Under the new act, workers can take their employer to tribunal for failure to ensure fair tips within 12 months of the breach. A judge can order the re-allocation of tips plus up to £5,000 compensation for each affected worker.
Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary, said: “Unite is passionate in its support for hospitality workers and it will leave no stone unturned in supporting our members who are facing exploitation by employers.
“If employers think they can continue to get away with failing to give workers their tips or docking their pay they need to think again. Unite will use every avenue to ensure our members secure pay and tip justice.”
Unite’s campaign is also calling for fair pay, ensuring workers do not need to rely on tips to make ends meet. It also advocates for transparency, allowing workers to see how tips are collected and distributed, fairness in tip distribution according to job roles and wages, and democracy, with fairness determined by workers via democratically elected TRONC committees.
Bryan Simpson, Unite's lead organiser for the hospitality sector, added: “While legislation to regulate tips is very much needed, it doesn't mean fair tips are guaranteed.
“Workers must collectively demand them through their union which is why we have launched the fair pay, fair tips campaign - to give hospitality workers the knowledge and tools to organise their workplace to win the pay and tips they deserve.”
In 2018, Unite Hospitality members at TGI Fridays took historic strike action to win a fairer tips policy. In 2022, workers at Cameron House reclaimed £138,000 in unpaid tips and service charges when it was discovered that their employer had not been transparent or fair with distribution.
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