Pay:

Tips: You own your tips. They are earned income each shift and there are only a few situations where your employer can legally take deductions from your tips.

Deductions: Under South Carolina law, any deduction to your wages (including tipped wages) must be disclosed to you in writing at the time you are hired. Any deductions made to your wages that were not disclosed in writing are likely not legal and you should consult with an attorney.

Credit Card Fees: When customers pay with a credit or debit card, the credit card company charges a percentage of total sale to your employer. Your employer can deduct some of this credit card processing fee from your tips, but only the portion of the fee from the amount tipped. If they are deducting anything more than the percentage from the tip portion of the charge, that is wage theft.

For instance if the bill was $100, the customer left a $20 tip for a total charged amount being $120. Then the Card Company charges 4% of that to your employer ($4.80). Your employer can deduct $0.80 from your paycheck. But they cannot deduct that full $4.80.

Tip Pooling: Tip pools can never include owners or general managers. 

If you are paid less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr), mandatory tip pools can not include workers who are not working in roles that are traditionally tipped jobs. The courts have interpreted this to mean that only workers who have regular contact with tipping customers can be included in a mandatory tip pool.

The classic edge case in this is an expediter position. If the expediter stays in the kitchen their whole shift and does not run food, then they would not be eligible to be a part of a tip pool. But if the expediter also spends time during their shift delivering food to the customers, then they would be eligible to be a part of the tip pool. 

Hourly pay and Tip Credit: The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 per hour. But in South Carolina your employer is allowed to take a “tip credit” for a portion of that wage and pay you as little as $2.13 per hour as long as you make enough in tips to make up the difference to an average of $7.25/hr.

Side Work and Tip Credits: If your employer is taking advantage of the tip credit and paying you less than the federal minimum wage you have some extra rights surrounding non-tipped work. 

Your employer can assign you non-tipped work while paying you less than $7.25/hr. But the amount of that non-tipped work can’t exceed 20% of the total time you are at work. And the jobs assigned must be directly related to the job for which you receive tips.

If the side-work exceeds 20% of your work day or if the assigned duties are not directly related to your tipped job, then you should be paid at least $7.25/hr for the time when you were doing the side-work.

For instance, if your job is as a server and you are paid less than $7.25/hr, your employer can’t assign you duties 

Protected Labor Activities

South Carolina is an “At Will” employment state. Which means that the default type of employment is “at will” and you can quit or be fired for practically any reason.

There are a few exceptions to this. You can’t be fired for any Constitutionally protected reasons like you race, nationality, age, or gender. 

You also can’t be fired for taking part in protected labor activities. These include organized negotiations between groups of coworkers and management. So if you and even just one other coworker go to ask for raises together, then you can’t be fired. Whereas, if you had gone alone to ask for a raise, you could be legally fired for that in South Carolina.