I'm not aware of Illinois law, and maybe it is different there. (Edit: As of now, , I see no evidence this is a special Illinois law, instead of being the US la

I'm not aware of Illinois law, and maybe it is different there. (Edit: As of now, , I see no evidence this is a special Illinois law, instead of being the US law discussed below. I continued the thread because maybe someone can show a citation.) US federal law says that tipped workers cannot be forced to share tips with untipped back-of-house staff unless the tipped workers are paid normal minimum wage. In which case all non-supervisory staff can be added to the same tip pool. It does not matter for the federal law if the "normal minimum wage" was legally required or optional. As for orthogonality, the question was "is the first $6.80/hr of tips subsidizing employer wage obligations". If the server is getting more money from the employer but the chef is getting more money from the servers and less from the employer, it's just an accounting change and the total takehome pay of waitstaff, chef and management/owner remains the same.