By Thomas Fraki

A former bartender at Surly’s Minneapolis brewery says he was fired for not adhering to an illegal tip pool that the company was enforcing.

James Conlon, a resident of Northeast Minneapolis, filed the lawsuit against Surly Brewing Company on Feb. 25. As of Monday, Surly had not responded to the allegations.

The alleged tip-pooling scheme described in the suit required servers and bartenders to pool all gratuity so that it could be distributed among a larger portion of the staff. However, this type of tip pool goes against Minnesota state law.

According to the law, “any gratuity received by an employee or deposited in or about a place of business for personal services rendered by an employee is the sole property of the employee.”

Surly’s staff manual states that the company chooses to utilize a tip pool to emphasize that its employees are part of a team and that no one employee is restricted to a single duty, according to the suit.

Although, “if [Surly] did retain a portion of the gratuities for itself, none of the servers or bartenders would have any way of knowing,” the suit contends.

The suit alleges that at least some of the staff were not content with the company’s gratuity system, and Surly management recruited Conlon and other staff to help get employees “on board” with the tip pool.

Conlon contends that he was fired because he told management that he would not try to persuade other employees and that he himself would opt out of participating the tip pool.

Surly management claimed that Conlon’s termination was due to him “being aggressive” toward other employees. However, his employee file did not address this issue. He was fired in spite of a recommendation not to by Nicole McIntosh, a member of Surly’s human resources department, the suit contends.

The suit has been left open to include any past or present Surly employees who wish to take action in the matter.