From the National Employment Law Project (http://www.nelp.org/):
If the tip rule change proposed by the Trump Department of Labor goes into effect, bartenders and servers could face a substantial pay cut, according to a new report from NELP and Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC).
The proposed change, backed by restaurant industry lobbyists, would roll back an Obama-era rule that protects workers in tipped industries from having their tips taken away by their employers. If the rule goes into effect, federal law would allow restaurant owners to confiscate and pocket all of the tips left by customers—without diners’ knowledge or consent—as long as restaurants pay their wait staff and bartenders at least the minimum wage.
NELP and ROC’s analysis confirms that servers and bartenders depend on tips for more than half of their earnings, with the median share of hourly earnings from tips accounting for 58.5 percent of wait staff’s earnings, and 54 percent of bartenders’ earnings.
Even including tips, the median hourly earnings for servers and bartenders are a meager $10.11 per hour, just $2.86 above the current federal wage floor. Black and Latinx workers on average make even less, suggesting that the rule change is likely to greatly impact workers of color and their families.
You can read the full report here.
Tell the Department of Labor to Protect Workers’ Tips at https://actionnetwork.org/letters/add-your-name-to-tell-department-of-labor-we-wont-let-you-take-workers-tips.
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