Waiters and bartenders could be forced to hand over their tips under a proposed Trump administration rule
The Trump administration proposed a rule that would force waiters and bartenders to share their tips.
Opponents of the rule fear that restaurant employers would pocket most of the tip money for themselves.
One estimate pegged the amount employers could keep at $5.8 billion.
Restaurant servers could see their paychecks take a hit if a newly proposed Trump-administration policy goes through.
The Department of Labor proposed this month to roll back a 2011 Obama-era policy, The Fair Labor Standards Act, that allows restaurant employees to keep their tips instead of having to share them with their non-tipped employees.
Forcing servers to pool their tips could redirect some of their earnings to non-tipped workers, such as the line cooks who make hourly wages. However, opponents of the measure fear it will lead to employers pocketing the shared tip money for themselves.
The proposed regulations are "not just about sharing tips with the back-of-the-house staff — that part would be OK — but employers would have the right to decide what to do with the tips," Saru Jayaraman, president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an advocacy group for restaurant workers, told The Washington Post.
In fact, if the proposal becomes law, employers could pocket $5.8 billion of workers' tips nationwide, according to an estimate from the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute.
"This rule will result in a substantial shift of tips from workers to employers," a report from the think tank said.
According to Reuters, The Supreme Court is considering whether to review a challenge to the Obama-administration tip-pooling ban by the National Restaurant Association and other groups.
Even redistributing tips to include non tipped workers would be outrageous. it would be plain communism. But that's not what's at stake here. The bill states that employers would take tips from waiters and bartenders but it doesn't mention what to do with the money. They would have the right to pocket it.
We know exactly what will happen : In private companies, the owner of the restaurant may decide to redistribute the tips among all the employees. But in Public corporatioons restaurants, the boards will require him to maximise profits so he will have no choice but to take all the tip money and redistribute nothing. And that's exactly the aim of the measure : allow public corporation restaurant to maximize their profits, take the money from the staff and give it to the boards.
Redistribute the money from the poors and the middle class to the riches and the big coporations, that the core of Trump's policy : that's what's this would do, that's what the tax bill will does.