It's illegal. They can sue the restaurant.

As far as I can tell most servers like tips because it lets them earn much more money than minimum wage.

Also, nowadays it's quite easy to get a message out to a huge audience. I'd certainly boycott any place that were so horribly mistreating its employees.

Seriously, go over to reddit and read /r/legaladvice for a while.

The almost daily litany of posts of "my employer is doing (list of highly illegal things involving wages), what should I do" will be a pretty big wakeup call for you. And if you think "well they can just sue" is an easy answer, remember employees who are identifiable as the source of wage complaints are at risk of being fired. That's illegal, too, but do you really think an employer who's already breaking labor laws will be scrupulous about not retaliating?

Also, these folks will really open your eyes (click through to the full report linked at the bottom):

https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...

Their data (2012) showed that the amount recovered from wage claims against US employers was three times the dollar value of all robberies in the US combined. Just the amount recovered; the amount actually owed but not paid is likely to be larger.

> Also, nowadays it's quite easy to get a message out to a huge audience. I'd certainly boycott any place that were so horribly mistreating its employees.

Then get ready to boycott 80% of restaurants in North America. It's a hugely abusive industry