How Unite members won fair tips at Scotland’s poshest resort

Fair tips in this country are hard to come by. For workers in the hospitality industry, an industry associated with low pay and job insecurity, tips matter. Unite has found that tips can add another £200 a month to a worker’s take-home pay – that’s the difference between them being able to get by and struggling to pay for essentials.

But, time and again, Unite and our members have to go in to battle to get what’s owed paid to workers. We win because we act collectively, just as we did at Cameron House recently when our members took on ‘Scotland’s poshest hotel’, putting £138,000 in backdated tips back into the pockets of over 200 workers who need it the most.

Angela Rayner understands that the mess and unfairness of tipping practices punishes workers and has vowed to change this in government – unlike Conservative MP Virginia Crosbie, whose private member’s bill is before the Commons, the deputy Labour leader has sought our views and taken the time to work on proposals that will deliver for workers.

The Crosbie bill, which government will claim is them delivering fair tips after seven years of failing to do so, provides employers a massive way out via a year-long trail through the courts by low waged hospitality workers who are not getting their tips. That’s just useless. In contrast, Labour’s tipping policy is a genuine effort to improve the situation for workers, closing loopholes and bringing consistency.

But for now, and no doubt in the future, this union will continue to organise workers to stand together to take on the bad guys and win – because we will have to, regardless of what politicians do. The 220 Cameron House workers found that acting together delivered their fantastic fair tips victory. Here, in their own words, are the Unite members of the Cameron House tips committee on why collective action delivers:

“From at least the start of 2022 there was a lot of uncertainty regarding tips and their fair distribution between the workers. This was in the form of room charge tips, credit card tips and service charge (which was 10% of all purchases). We brought this to the attention of management who proceeded to avoid any explanation as to where tips and the service charges were going.

“To understand the scale of this, in the month of August alone the amount of service charge collected was £86,000. With some of us receiving as little as £14 per month in tips, we knew that something was wrong.

“After months of being ignored as individuals, we decided to take action collectively. We joined Unite Hospitality and lodged a collective grievance with over 60 signatories. Within days we had a meeting with the resort director and director of HR. They promised fairness and transparency but refused to agree to our most important demand: a tips committee to determine fair distribution of tips, elected by the workforce. So we collectively decided to go public with the grievance and gained nationwide media attention.

“Once the senior management knew what we were capable of as a union, they started to pay us the respect that we deserved and we started getting answers.

“After weeks of negotiations, they finally agreed to the election of a tips committee, which went out to over 200 food and beverage workers across the resort. Unsurprisingly, they voted overwhelmingly for our proposed system which will see all £138,000 of retained service charge and credit card tips fairly distributed to all workers who earned them from October, based on how many hours they worked. They also voted for future service charge to be distributed per unit meaning another £70,000-£80,000 per month in the back pockets of the workers who earned it.

“Three months ago, as individual complaints continued to be ignored, we could never have imagined that we would have won transparency on how tips are distributed, let alone have forced the company to facilitate the election of a Tips Committee and backdated tips worth £138,000.

“The key was collectivism. It is how every worker in hospitality should demand what they deserve, through their union.”