Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., one of the largest hotel operators in the world, agreed to settle a class action suit brought by waiters working in one of its Westin resorts. 

The complaint alleged that a 20% service charge that was added to customers’ bills at the hotel was not given to food and beverage workers.  Instead, the Westin would either keep a portion of the service charge for itself or use it to pay managers and other non-tipped workers. 

The Westin did not inform customers that the service charge did not completely go to servers and this affected the tips the servers received.  Starwood agreed to pay $940,000 as a settlement and $25,000 to each class representative as incentive payments.