The federal government is changing the rules on how inclined workers are paid, in a move that workers’ supporters say will take $ 700 million a year out of the pockets of servers, bartenders, bells and other service workers.
The Department of Labor finalized a rule late Tuesday that allows employers to ask tipping workers, such as waiters or bartenders, to share their advice with workers without tipping, such as cooks and dishwashers.
The rule also removed a previous requirement regarding how long it might take for inclined workers to work without inclination. Previously, the government limited the amount of time a tipped worker could spend in tipless activities to 20% of his shift. Removing this limit allows employers to drastically pay workers, according to Heidi Shierholz, the left-wing policy director at the Institute for Economic Policy who worked in the Department of Labor under President Obama.
“It allows employers to have workers who spend more time doing unskilled work while still receiving the minimum wage,” Shierholz said.
For workers who rely primarily on customer advice, work without a tip is part of the job. Servants and bartenders often help set up a restaurant before it opens or help clean up after the unit closes and customers leave. The new rule will allow employers to transfer much more of this job without a tip to their lowest paid workforce, EPI said.
For example, instead of having three dishwashers, a restaurant might decide to hire a single dishwasher and ask all waiters to periodically wash the dishes as part of their exchange, EPI said. This would be a big saving for the restaurant, which is required to pay dishwashers a minimum wage of $ 7.25, but can pay servers with a tip. only $ 2.13 in some states.
Over the course of a year, paid workers will lose more than $ 700 million under this new rule, EPI estimated last fall. That number has probably increased since the coronavirus pandemic, Shierholz noted. With a drastically reduced indoor table, many restaurants that managed to stay open have moved into most of the works without tipping, such as preparation of transfer orders.
Equal parts
According to the department’s analysis, the requirement to share DOL advice could transfer $ 109 million from bent workers to their counterparts behind the house. In a press release, the administrator of wages and hours, Cheryl Stanton, said that the new rule could increase the income of workers behind the house, as well as “reduce the wage gap” between workers who receive tips with customers and workers who do not receive.
In many restaurants, front-line workers have traditionally earned more than their in-house counterparts. Nationally, restaurant work remains among the lowest paid jobs. On average, waiters earn only $ 26,600 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while dishwashers earn $ 24,400 and cooks $ 27,550.
“Don’t solve the lowest wages of the lowest paid workers by taking it out of the lowest paid workers’ wages. You pay them more,” said Shierholz, EPI.