by Via the Economic Policy Intstitute: The Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule that would allow restaurants to take the tips that servers earn and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers.1 But, crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute “pooled” tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as tipped workers earn minimum wage, employers could legally pocket those tips. Evidence shows that even now, when employers are prohibited from pocketing tips, many still do. Research on workers in three large U.S. cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) finds that 12 percent of tipped workers had tips stolen by their employer or supervisor.2 Further, recent research shows that
Topics:
Dan Crawford considers the following as important: politics, Taxes/regulation
This could be interesting, too:
Bill Haskell writes Healthcare Insurance in the United States
Joel Eissenberg writes Seafood says global warming is not a hoax
Bill Haskell writes The Opioid Epidemic from 1980 Onward in My Words
Angry Bear writes Questionable Use of Health Risk Assessments Drives Costs
Via the Economic Policy Intstitute:
The Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule that would allow restaurants to take the tips that servers earn and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers.1 But, crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute “pooled” tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as tipped workers earn minimum wage, employers could legally pocket those tips.
Evidence shows that even now, when employers are prohibited from pocketing tips, many still do. Research on workers in three large U.S. cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) finds that 12 percent of tipped workers had tips stolen by their employer or supervisor.2 Further, recent research shows that workers in restaurants and bars are much more likely to suffer minimum wage violations—meaning that they receive less than the applicable minimum wage—than workers in other industries. For tipped workers, some of these minimum wage violations occur when an employer confiscates tips.3
…
“The proposed rule rescinds those portions of the 2011 regulations that restrict employer use of customer tips when the employer pays at least the full Federal minimum wage.”5 It is thus deeply unusual that DOL did not provide a quantitative estimate of the amount of tips that will be transferred from workers to employers under the proposed rule, given that they are required to do so by law.