Unite the union has launched a campaign to ensure hospitality workers receive fair pay and fair tips.
The campaign will focus on ensuring that employees in the hospitality sector understand their rights and have the support and tools they need to collectively enforce those rights.
Unite’s campaign will focus on: fair pay now, to ensure that employees are paid enough so that they do not need to rely on tips to make ends meet; 100% tips, so that employees receive 100% without any employer deductions; transparency, so that employees have the right to see exactly how many tips have been collected and distributed; fairness, to ensure tips are distributed equitably according to job role, wages; and democracy to consider that fairness should be determined by the workers who earn tips via democratically-elected Tronc committees, a body responsible for representing the interests of the employees.
The campaign comes after the government published its statutory guidance on 29 July for distributing tips fairly under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, which comes into force on 1 October 2024. The purpose of the act is to ensure the fair and transparent allocation of all tips, gratuities and service charges.
Sharon Graham, general secretary at Unite, 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.”
