employment lawyers love when managers refuse to honor their payment obligations. Treble damages.

This comment is very disconnected from the reality of service industry wage theft. Employment lawyers rarely bother with a case where the potential payout is a few thousand dollars.

In theory the federal or state department of labor could do something without the worker needing a lawyer. The federal DoL is useless in such cases and most state DoLs don't seem to do much either.

My understanding is if an employee who gets paid largely in tips isnt making more than min wage, that employee is almost always let go or quits. Employment layers dont love trying to prove a case that is pretty unlikely to be provable.

They can always find a reason, such as "so and so customer complained about your level of service and I can't have any complaints as a business owner" which on its face is a legitimate reason to fire someone.

^This is how it is in practice

You would rather be let go for performance reasons rather than they will pay you difference in 5$

I don't understand how it's the customer's fault if managers are blatantly stealing wages. That sounds like someone else's problem to solve. If servers make it public, I'll stop going to that place, but preemptively tipping to avoid illegal labor practices feels like a bad solution.