{"id":340471,"date":"2017-12-21T12:13:36","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T11:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/tips-should-go-to-workers-not-their-bosses\/"},"modified":"2017-12-21T12:13:36","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T11:13:36","slug":"tips-should-go-to-workers-not-their-bosses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/tips-should-go-to-workers-not-their-bosses\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips Should Go to Workers, Not Their Bosses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Thea Bryan is a single mother putting herself through graduate school. She spends her days at an unpaid internship for her social work program. At nights, she bartends for tips.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, the pay is lucrative. But around October, her work \u2014 and money \u2014 started to lag. \u201cWhen business is slow, as it has been for me lately, I don\u2019t get paid. The managers get paid, the kitchen staff gets paid, the dishwasher gets paid. I don\u2019t,\u201d Bryan said.<\/p>\n

The Department of Labor could make things much worse for Bryan. Under a proposed new rule, she might have to hand her tips over to her bosses.<\/p>\n

The new rule would let minimum wage employers take over the tips that customers leave for their servers. That’s right: If you serve, your boss would get your tips.<\/p>\n

Bryan shared her story at a press briefing put on by Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United on December 12. \u201cWhy is there such an effort to keep people from making decent wages?\u201d Bryan asked. \u201cFirst they don\u2019t want to pay an decent hourly wage if you get tips. Now they want to take your tips if you make a decent hourly wage!\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Restaurant Association, also known as \u201cthe other NRA,\u201d frames the proposed rule as a way to allow for tip pooling, to end pay disparities between the front and back of the house.<\/p>\n

\"Bad<\/a><\/p>\n

joelogon\/Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But ROC United and other groups point out that there\u2019s no provision to ensure that tips stay in the hands of workers and not their bosses.<\/p>\n

In fact, the language in proposal suggests that employers could allocate tips to make capital improvements or lower menu prices\u00a0\u2014 or they\u00a0could just pocket the tips themselves.<\/p>\n

That transfer of money from workers up to their bosses is no small change. If the rule is enacted, the Economic Policy Institute says that employers would take $5.8 billion in tips from workers, an estimate they call conservative.<\/p>\n

The restaurant industry is already rife with wage theft.<\/p>\n

Employers of tipped workers are among the worst offenders in minimum wage violations, especially due to the sub-minimum tipped wage. Employers can pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour as long as their tips bring them up to the full minimum wage.<\/p>\n

But enforcement is lax. Bryan says she\u2019s gone two weeks without getting paid a minimum wage, and hasn\u2019t been able to get her employer to make up the difference.<\/p>\n

Some employers already steal tips, as ROC United co-director Saru Jayaraman pointed out. ROC United has surveyed nearly 10,000 restaurant workers, Jayaraman said, and one in five reported that employers have taken a portion of their tips, even though that\u2019s currently not legal.<\/p>\n

The Department of Labor is already feeling the pressure. Jayaraman said tens of thousands of people submitted comments against the rule in the first three days alone.<\/p>\n

The battle over tips is only adding to Bryan\u2019s stress over wages. \u201cMy son is 11 years old,\u201d she said. \u201cI would like to know how much money I will be making any given month so I can enroll him in after school activities and maybe take him to the movies every once in a while, or pay my rent.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Bryan\u2019s not limiting her advocacy to the fight over owning tips. She says she\u2019d like to see all people in the service industry get a livable minimum wage, just like any other worker would expect. \u201cI\u2019m a restaurant professional,\u201d she declared, \u201cand I deserve a professional wage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post Tips Should Go to Workers, Not Their Bosses<\/a> appeared first on OtherWords<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted from Other Words<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thea Bryan is a single mother putting herself through graduate school. She spends her days at an unpaid internship for her social work program. At nights, she bartends for tips. Sometimes, the pay is lucrative. But around October, her work \u2014 and money \u2014 started to lag. \u201cWhen business is slow, as it has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-340471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}