Last-Minute Trump Admin Law Allows Restaurant Owners Steal Wait Staff Tips

One of the final pieces of legislation rolled out by the Trump administration will allow restaurant bosses to save money by taking tips away from serving staff to help pay cooks and dishwashers in the back.

A new rule rolled out in the final days of the Trump administration would allow restaurants to pull tips from their waitstaff to pay cooks and other employees, putting more cash in the pockets of owners while forcing front-of-house staffers to do more work for less money.

Employers have been allowed to pool tips and share them among employees who typically receive them. The 148-page regulation published Tuesday by the Department of Labor would expand that, allowing restaurants to pay the wages of cooks and dishwashers with money earned by those waiting tables.

Tipped staffers can earn as little as $2.13 an hour in wages from their employer and corporate restaurant owners want them to work more while covering labor costs of the back-of-house employees with tips.  Yep.

The regulation would also do away with the so-called 80-20 rule, in which tipped employees — who can earn as little as $2.13 an hour from their employer as long as their tips get them to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 — can't be asked to spend more than 20% of their shift performing nontipped work, like rolling silverware or cleaning. The new standard would be "reasonable time" spent doing such things.

This is a tad confusing.  Here's what that causes to happen:

Why pay cleaning staff the federal minimum wage when tipped employees, who cost a fraction of that, could be asked to do the job instead?  

In a 2019 analysis, EPI estimated that the regulation would cost workers $700 million a year and, by doing away with the 80-20 rule, encourage employers to rely more heavily on tipped labor.

"It's really, really clear this is about the interests of corporate executives and shareholders. Like, that is what's driving this," said Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.

The new regulation isn't set to take effect for 60 days. It's possible that President-elect Joe Biden and his team could postpone its implementation....

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/restaurants-can-take-now-take-more-of-their-workers-tips-2020-12