They’re out $51,200.
Nope, they’re not. Federal employment law requires that anyone who doesn’t reach minimum wage when making tipped wages must be paid the difference by their employer. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa
These workers are making minimum wage either way, assuming there’s no actual wage theft going on here (which there of course could be).
The actual reason this is bullshit is that their tips from the part of their job that is tipped labor are now going toward time that isn’t tipped labor, meaning that they have a much lower chance of ever making above minimum wage in their tipped hours from the tips that receive.
The problem is, I don’t believe it’s at a minute-by-minute level of granularity. If you’re working several hours a day at tipped minimum, and the rest making well above minimum after tips, repeat the above daily and average at minimum wage for the pay period… That’s good enough.