Stiffing the wait staff
THE GOAL of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority is to provide consistent, world-class services for meetings and conferences. It's tough to take that message seriously when the MCCA contracts with a food service vendor that holds back tips from its wait staff.
Last week, food service workers at the Hynes Convention Center and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center brought a class-action suit against the MCCA and Aramark, a Philadelphia-based multinational company that provides food and beverage service at the Back Bay and South Boston facilities. At issue is a 20 percent service charge added to patrons' bills. The suit claims that the proceeds of that service charge aren't going to the wait staff. Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney for the food service workers, calls the practice "shockingly illegal." A company spokeswoman said it does not comment on pending litigation.
The suit must be seen in the context of rancorous labor negotiations between Aramark and Unite Here Local 26. But the demands of state law and simple fairness are the same:Service fees that customers assume to be tips belong to workers. Liss-Riordan says she has won at trial or settled more than 20 similar cases, including a federal verdict in April ordering American Airlines to award $325,000 in lost tips to nine skycaps at Logan Airport.
The Convention Center Authority is caught up in this mess. Under its deal with Aramark, it gets about a third of the gross receipts for food and drink at the convention center sites - about $8 million a year, including the authority's cut of the service charge. It's an unseemly position for the authority. And it could be bad for business. The MCCA has problems attracting conventions sympathetic to labor due to the stalled contract negotiations between Aramark and Unite Here. Pocketing part of the wait staff's tips could deepen the boycott.
MCCA executive director James Rooney is in a tight spot. He has criticized the Aramark operation and even has threatened to get a new vendor. But he also insists that Aramark is offering the union a generous five-year deal amounting to an 8 percent annual increase in wages and health benefits. And the fact that the wait staff hasn't made an issue of the service fee for more than a decade, he says, reflects the workers' preference for contracts with high hourly wages that do not include gratuities.
The tips issue, however, trumps whatever is happening around the collective bargaining table. Diners, regardless of their political leanings, would get indigestion knowing that their service charges are ending up in hands other than those who served them. 