[taco.vidal]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rest...outs-1.4517271

A number of popular Canadian restaurants have increased the amount of tips servers must share with their colleagues, CBC's Marketplace has learned. And many servers say that money is being doled out to higher-paid staff in lieu of a raise.

"Tipping out" is a common practice in which servers pay into a pool that managers then distribute to non-tip-receiving staff such as hostesses, bussers and kitchen workers.

As businesses grapple with increases to minimum wage, some have cut employee hours, reduced benefits or found other ways to offset increased costs.

Most of the restaurant locations Marketplace visited had bumped the tip out by one percentage point.

For instance, The Keg went from four to five per cent. East Side Mario's from 2.5 to 3.5 per cent.

Earls, a chain with 56 locations across Canada, increased its tip out by .5 per cent, but it had the highest total tip out, CBC discovered, at 5.5 per cent.

An employee at Moxie's, which has 66 locations, told Marketplace their tip out was expected to increase to 5.75 per cent, from 4.75.

Servers 'aren't happy'
Ontario and Alberta will both have a $15 minimum wage by this time next year, and in several other provinces the minimum wage increases each year on a certain date. With those increases, there is pressure on some restaurateurs to also give a salary hike to higher-paid workers, often as an incentive to keep reliable and valuable staff.

"We, the servers, have to pick up the slack," said one employee at a Keg location. "The servers aren't happy about it but there's nothing we can do."

A server at a popular family dining chain in Alberta says it isn't fair to supplement the higher-paid workers' wages with the lower-paid ones.