More DOL Opinion Letters: Manager Tips, Walking Time and Volunteer Hours

The Department of Labor (DOL) continued its streak of opinion letters with three new missives addressing the participation of managers and supervisors in tip pools when performing tipped work; the compensability of walking time to and from employer-designated areas during a meal period and whether exempt nonprofit employees may volunteer for their employer outside of regular work hours.

In FLSA2026-11, the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) was asked whether an uncompensated 60-minute lunch break, during which employees spend between six and 14 minutes walking to and from the employer’s designated break area, constitutes a bona fide meal period.

The employee was a security therapy aide (STA) at a detention facility where employees are prohibited from bringing food beyond the entry building. Entitled to a 60-minute unpaid meal period, STAs are prohibited from eating at their work area and must walk to a designated break area to access and eat their lunch.

Based on the three to seven minute walk in one direction, STAs end up with 46 to 54 minutes in the designated break area.

The DOL found the meal period is bona fide under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

“[T]he time set aside for the meal period is sufficient to allow employees to use it for its purpose and it is an uninterrupted period during which you are relieved from duty for the purpose of eating or engaging in personal activities,” according to the letter. “[Y]ou are relieved from your work duties during the break and the period is long enough for you to use it for the purpose of eating a meal, even accounting for the travel time required by your employer.”

In FLSA2026-12, the DOL considered whether, and to what extent, and under what circumstances exempt employees of a nonprofit organization that breeds and trains service dogs may volunteer outside of their normal work hours to perform juvenile canine socialization services for the employing organization pursuant to the FLSA.

The juvenile canine caretakers provide basic care, early training and socialization for the puppies in the volunteers’ homes before the puppies receive the organization’s specialized training at its onsite facilities.

Exempt and non-exempt nonprofit employees may volunteer to be juvenile canine caretakers, and their volunteering hours will not count as compensable work, or part of the employment relationships for FLSA purposes, so long as the services the employer employs them to perform are not the same or similar with those involved in raising puppies at home, the DOL explained.

Of course, the employees must also offer their volunteer services “freely and without pressure or coercion, direct or implied,” from the organization and “without promise, expectation or receipt of compensation for services rendered,” the letter noted.

“Although volunteers may significantly contribute to a nonprofit’s mission, nonprofit employers should exercise caution when engaging employees as volunteers to ensure they are not inadvertently misclassified under the Act,” the DOL warned. “This may result in costly ramifications as a nonprofit could face potential liability, including back wages and overtime, liquidated damages, attorneys’ fees, among other things.”

As for tipping, the DOL considered whether the FLSA allows a restaurant supervisor to keep a portion of other employees’ tips when also working as a bartender and assisting other employees.

The restaurant at issue has a tip pooling arrangement where servers are required to “tip out” amounts based on a percentage of sales to bartenders, hosts and bussers. A shift supervisor who primarily performs management functions – including determining when employees’ shifts end and developing schedules – also works a bartending shift and collects a tip out from the servers.

Assuming that the shift supervisor satisfied the executive duties criteria in the FLSA’s tip provisions, “he or she is prohibited from receiving any portion of tips from other employees – even if he or she also works bartending shifts alongside other employees or assists other employees performing tipped work,” the DOL wrote in FLSA2026-13. “This includes receiving other employees’ tips from a ‘tip out’ … or from a tip pool to which the manager is otherwise required to contribute.”

However, the shift supervisor may retain any tips received directly from customers for service the supervisor “directly and solely provided,” the agency added. For example, when the shift supervisor tends the bar, he or she may keep tips left by the bar customers during the period in which he or she is bartending.

“There, the tips are left for the services the employee solely and directly provided,” the DOL said. “If, however, the employee’s tips and other bartenders’ tips are consolidated and split among all bartenders working that shift, and therefore it is not possible to attribute the tip solely to the supervisor, the supervisor is not permitted to take any portion of those tips.”

To read FLSA2026-11, click .

To read FLSA2026-12, click .

To read FLSA2026-13, click .

Why it matters: The DOL continues to provide employers guidance with its opinion letters on FLSA issues, coming on the heels of considering when commuting time from home to work is compensable in the context of employees who work at both home and the office.