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Discretionary Benefit Or Entitlement? Hospitality Workers And The Ownership Of Customer Tips In Australia, Amelia Gow, Andrew Frazer

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The tipping of hospitality workers by customers is an increasingly common custom in Australia. Tips are a substantial (though unquantified) part of the income of hospitality workers. Such workers are often casual and vulnerable young employees. Tipping occurs in a tripartite relationship between the business operator, the customer and the worker. It is almost completely unregulated by the labour law instruments of awards and enterprise agreements. This is a ‘regulatory space’ where labour law and consumer protection law may potentially intersect.

Who owns tips? While customers may reasonably assume that service workers will receive all the tips they leave, either …