> There is no practical difference between paying less "because tip" and not paying the tip.
There is, because the pay can't go negative.
> The legal system is not staffed by robots, either. I don't see how they can defend a class action regardless of what words they've written on a TOS.
It depends on what the lawsuit is for. Normally we have things like "minimum wage" but those don't apply if you manage to convince everyone it's a contractor situation. If they can be classified as employees then there's all sorts of lovely anti-tip-taking law. But that's a big if. And I don't think contractors have tip laws? It's not generally illegal to say one thing about how your company allocates money coming in and then do another.
