Court guts Starbucks tip ruling

Lately, the California Supreme Court seems to have adopted right-wing judicial activism as its official ideology.

Starbucks was the target of a lawsuit because it took counter servers' tips and redistributed them to their store managers. Last year, a San Diego County judge correctly ordered the chain of coffee shops to repay $86,000,000 to baristas whose tip money was taken from them.

But in June, a state district court gutted that ruling - claiming that the counter servers and the managers had the same job, so the managers should take some of the tip money.

Um, no. Managers and servers do not have the same job. Servers serve. Managers manage. Furthermore, customers intended the tips for the servers.

And now - without giving a reason - the California Supreme Court has let the district court ruling stand. The $86,000,000 that the servers were owed is now gone. Gone into thin air.

Bear in mind that it violates federal labor law for a company to take employees' tips and redistribute them to their bosses (or to anyone else).

Activist judges have no right to legalize a company's purloining of workers' earnings - yet the trend continues.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/09/financial/f222603D92.DTL&tsp=1)