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Back in December, we reported on the Trump administration's proposed changes to tip-pooling regulations that would allow employers to pocket servers' tips as long as the employees continue to make minimum wage. That's right: Employers could take servers' tips and just dole out the minimum wage. But wait, it gets worse!
Turns out, the Department Of Labor knew how crappy this would make life for restaurant employees. This Bloomberg Law article, citing sources within the agency, reveals that the Department Of Labor knowingly buried its own data that showed restaurant workers would lose billions of dollars in gratuities under the new proposal.
Source: https://thetakeout.com/proposed-tip-pooling-law-is-so-bad-for-workers-the-gove-1822664111
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:10PM (2 children)
Where I live (Switzerland), tipping is entirely optional, because restaurants actually pay their employees a real wage. So, instead of being left to the vagaries of random customers, they actually earn a living like anyone: being paid by their employer to do their job. Tips here play the role they should: an extra reward for exceptional service.
Why does the US allow an exception to your employment laws specifically for gastronomy? This makes no sense. It allows restaurants to treat their staff like dirt. There's almost no cost to a restaurant for mismanaging staff. And - even under current law, there are plenty of restaurants where the tips don't always make their way to the wait staff (tips put on credit cards, or paid to a central cashier, for example).
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:37PM
it was probably a concession to get min wage laws passed in the first place.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:11PM
Read all about it [motherjones.com]
The summary: The exception to the minimum wage was created to allow the Pullman Company to engage in the racist practice of hiring black porters for no wage at all beyond whatever tips the white customers riding the rails deigned to give them. It took strikes and other labor actions to convince Congress to create a minimum wage for tipped workers at all, that was about half of what untipped workers got but still much better than nothing, and the ratio between tipped and untipped workers was kept roughly steady for several decades. Then in the mid-1990's, Herman Cain's lobbying on behalf of the National Restaurant Association convinced Newt Gingrich to decouple those two numbers, and tipped workers haven't seen a raise since.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.