Mayfair casino facing legal action after former waiter says he did not get fair share of tips

A Mayfair casino is facing legal action from a former waiter who says he was not given a fair share of tips.

The former worker at the Metropolitan Mayfair – part of the Metropolitan Casinos group owned by the US investment firm Silver Point Capital, which operates seven casinos in the UK and four in Egypt – has filed a complaint with the employment tribunal in London over his share of cash tips given directly to him, which he says he was forced to share with managers and other staff.

He has also raised concerns about the distribution of the service charge, claiming that management, including senior management, “appeared to receive a larger share despite not being directly involved in serving customers or working on the frontline”.

The waiter, who said he had been asked to leave after five years at Metropolitan Casinos, said the company had “refused to provide any details” of how it shared out the service charge so he could not tell if it “complied with the principles of fairness and transparency”.

The casino adds an optional 12.5% service charge on food and drinks ordered in its restaurants and bar.

Under legislation implemented in October 2024, employers in Britain must share out 100% of service charges and card tips collected in a venue to workers there. It must be done in a “fair and transparent manner” and employees have the right to know “how tips are allocated and distributed”.

The former member of staff bringing the tribunal case and another former worker told the Guardian that the way tips and service charge were shared out was very opaque, and they had no knowledge of how – or if – tips paid on cards were shared with staff.

Payslips do not lay out how the share of service charge has been calculated and do not mention card tips. Managers take an equal share of cash tips, which waiters say is unfair.

The tips and service charge amount to thousands of pounds a day and make up a considerable proportion of earnings for frontline staff.

Draft guidance on implementing the tips legislation, issued by the government last week, decreed companies must consult workers on tipping policy, “ideally achieving broad agreement in the workplace that the system of allocation and distribution of tips is fair, reasonable and clear”.

The Unite union, which represents thousands of hospitality workers, said the draft should be withdrawn and rethought, as it enabled employers to ignore workers’ concerns as long as they carried out a consultation process.

The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: “Workers should have control over their own tips, pure and simple. Most customers assume they do anyway. Giving managers control, even letting them keep a slice for themselves, is clearly unfair.”

While workers at the Metropolitan said they did get a share of the service charge and cash tips, in line with the October 2024 legislation, they said it was not clear who got a share of all the payments and how those shares were calculated.

The worker bringing the tribunal said: “I and other staff regularly received tips and service charges from customers who believed they were rewarding frontline workers. However, in practice, both service charge and cash tips were shared with casino management. This left many of us feeling that the intention of customers – to support staff – was not being respected.”

A payslip seen by the Guardian indicated that the worker was paid £13.50 an hour and received £97 in service charge in a month when he worked 120 hours, and also got an hourly “shift premium” of just over £100 for working late nights during the month.

The worker says he was dismissed after asking questions about what happened to the service charge and card tips.

A letter from the company says he was dismissed as it claimed to have evidence he had personally kept a large cash tip given by a customer, rather than sharing it with colleagues as is the policy. The waiter denies this and is also bringing a tribunal for wrongful dismissal.

A tips policy for the casino seen by the Guardian states that an independent person, known as a troncmaster, allocates the service charge pot – known as a tronc – to eligible workers “based on objective criteria such as, but not limited to: hours worked, role, and contribution to service delivery”. It adds: “The allocation methodology for each venue is set out in individual venue tronc rules.”

It also says: “Tronc rules will be accessible and displayed within venues.” However, workers said they had not seen the rules displayed.

Another former worker said that cash tips were shared out every week among workers by the manager, who they said usually took home between £150 and £300 from this pot each week. These tips came on top of basic earnings of about £28,000 a year, service charge of about £300 and some extra pay for late night shifts.

He said that all the waiters had complained after they learned from information sent out by the company that managers were taking an equal share of cash tips as them despite earning a higher basic salary and not spending time working with customers.

“Cash tips come from the floor. You build up a rapport with people and some people just come in and are generous. When you are on the floor you are dealing with different situations, awkward customers, hard customers and nice customers. We do the groundwork for the tips,” he said.

A spokesperson for the casino said it did not comment on specific employees or cases, but said: “We can state categorically that our company does not benefit in any way from tips given to employees, with allocation arrangements determined independently in accordance with the legislation.

“More broadly, we are confident that all of our policies and procedures in the area you have referred to are compliant with all relevant legal and regulatory requirements. As a company we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of compliance and governance.”