Report on Workplace Harassment, Compensation, and Legal Compliance

This report addresses key legal aspects of the hospitality industry, focusing on workplace harassment and employee compensation. It defines and differentiates between quid pro quo and hostile work environment harassment, outlining vicarious liability and procedures to establish a non-discriminatory workplace. The report details essential elements of compensation, including minimum wage laws at federal, state and county levels, overtime pay, and specific considerations for tipped employees, with a practical example. It also explains progressive discipline programs and the steps involved in addressing employee misconduct. The report references relevant legal cases and provides practical guidance for employers to create a legally compliant and equitable work environment, ensuring fair treatment and adherence to labor laws within the hospitality sector.

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Name of Student
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a) Harassment - Harassment is any unnecessary or unwelcome, persistent conduct
which, on account of its age, sex, race or ethnicity, offends, humiliates or intimids the
victim and targets them. There are also other types and ways of violence that may be
mental, physical, or emotional.
i)
a) Quid pro quo: Quid pro quo is sexual assault, which requires an arrangement offered in
acts, because you're going to get it if you do. For examples, an employee goes to his
employer to seek a raise in pay and he boss replies that the employee can get the raise if the
employee cooperates with the boss in sexual endeavours.
b) Hostile Work Environment: A individual of authority should not automatically entail
sexual abuse that results in a toxic work atmosphere. The comments and acts of
anyone inside an organisation, not just those with supervisory positions will
contribute to a hostile working atmosphere. For example, when any colleague
intervenes in another employee’s personal space, try to kiss or does sexual approaches
(Boella & Goss-Turner, 2019).
ii) Other Types of Hostile Work Environment: Bullying or discriminating or passing
bad remarks to someone on basis of disability or race is also comes under the
charge of a hostile work environment.
legal concept of vicarious liability: Vicarious liability is a legal concept that provides the
individual that has not incurred the damage but has a clear statutory relation to the individual
who has behaved carelessly with an accident. That is sometimes named presumed neglect. So
a manager is legally liable to any employee’s wellbeing. If the administration shows any kind
of negligence towards any employee the employee can sue the administration on the terms of

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vicarious liability, this can be a big problem for the owners and the managers supervising the
establishment (Zaitseva et al., 2017).
policies and procedures to ensure a great work environment:
Step – 1 No tolerance policy towards sexual harassments and bullying.
Step – 2 Firm application of fair employee policies.
Step – 3 Promoting health and wellness among employees.
Step – 4 Encouraging team building activities.
Step – 5 Providing the employees with proper amount of break time.
Step – 6 Engaging in verbal communication with the employees.
Compensation
Minimum wage: The lowest compensation employers can compensate their staff lawfully is a
minimum wage.
Federal definition of Overtime Pay: The Fair Labor Standard Act mandates that employers be
given an extra wage not less than one and a half of their daily compensation level for hours
served above 40 in a working week.
The statutory minimum wage is $10 an hour from 1 January 2020.
Following 40 hours 'service in a single week, the Statutory additional time rate shall be at
least one half times the normal wage scale for workers (Koseoglu et al., 2018).
Current Maryland Minimum Wage is 10.10 USD per hour.
Montgomery County Minimum Wage: The minimum wage would be $13 an hour for
workers count of 51 or more, whilst the minimum wage for the employees of 50 or less

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would increase to $12.50 an hour. The rate is not applicable to workers aged 18 or younger
who operate fewer than 20 hours a week.
The minimum wage for prince George County Minimum Wage is 11.50 USD per hour.
Current Events
Tip Credit and Minimum Wage
A tip credit helps employers to offer a lesser salary than the minimum wage on tipping
workers as long as the amount is equivalent to the minimum wage rate. It basically helps
employers to match salaries and daily pay of your workers with the minimum wage.
Minimum wage for Tipped Employees in Montgomery County Maryland: Registered
workers who get tipped in excess of $30 a month will collect a standard State pay amount per
hour. Employers are expected to pay $3.63 an hour at least to tipped employees (Penela &
Serrasqueiro, 2019).
A restaurant server (tipped position at a restaurant with more than 51 employees) in
Montgomery County Maryland works 40 hours during the week; and reports $300 in tips due
to a very slow week due to COVID-19 epidemic. What is required by the restaurant? Show
your calculations and explain. Could not do the calculation.
Establishment’s progressive discipline
If any server repeatedly fails to do the assigned side work:
As it the employee is failing to do side work and not his primary work the manager should
 At first approach the employee with a verbal warning which will not include any kind
of harassment.

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 If the employee keeps failing the side work, then he/she should have a properly
written warning about his failing to do the side work.
 As pre-determined in the verbal warning and the written warnings, three back to back
written warnings in one month will result in termination of the said employee.

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References
Boella, M. J., & Goss-Turner, S. (2019). Human resource management in the hospitality
industry: A guide to best practice. Routledge.
Koseoglu, M. A., Law, R., & Dogan, I. C. (2018). Exploring the social structure of strategic
management research with a hospitality industry focus. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Penela, D., & Serrasqueiro, R. M. (2019). Identification of risk factors in the hospitality
industry: Evidence from risk factor disclosure. Tourism Management
Perspectives, 32, 100578.
Zaitseva, N. A., Larionova, A. A., Morozova, M. A., Yakimenko, R. V., & Balitskaya, I. V.
(2017). Building a Strategy of Development of Hospitality Industry on the Basis of
Improvement of the System of Personnel Training. In Integration and Clustering for
Sustainable Economic Growth (pp. 507-517). Springer, Cham.