“The rich, the famous, and the powerful go there to be wined and dined and waited on by a very dedicated workforce who happen to largely be immigrants,’’ said Brian Lang, president of Unite Here Local 26, the hospitality workers’ union that represents the Harvard Club servers. “The club members are being duped, and I would assume that they would be as outraged as any of the rest of us are about this practice.’’
Harvard Club member Mac Caplan, a 28-year-old high school English teacher in Weston who uses the club mainly to play squash, said he was surprised the staff was not sharing in the surcharge.
“Because it says ‘in lieu of gratuity,’ I assumed part of it was gratuity going to the workers who were serving at the time,’’ he said. “Certainly [the club] could be more transparent with the membership about where that club charge goes.’’
The club has a no-tipping policy, but member Francis J. Connolly said he thought that meant a gratuity was included in the bill.
“If I was there for dinner I thought the tip’s taken care of,’’ said Connolly, a 54-year-old analyst at the Boston public opinion research firm Kiley & Co. who held his wedding reception at the club nine years ago.
The Harvard Club, which has 250 employees, has two locations, in the Back Bay and the Financial District. Its 5,000 members - alumni from Harvard, Yale, and other elite schools - pay as much as $165 a month and an initiation fee of up to $2,000 to belong. General manager Eric Gillberg declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The club is not affiliated with Harvard University.
The Massachusetts tips law states that any service charge a customer would “reasonably expect’’ to be given to a server in lieu of a tip must be given to the employee.
Dozens of establishments have been sued for violating this law, including a Berkshires resort that last month reached a combined $7 million settlement with some 700 current and former workers. Dunkin’ Donuts is facing a class-action suit because supervisors and managers share in tips - a case being brought by lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is also representing the Harvard Club workers.
