News

Restaurant staff wins big with tip regs as budget is signed

March 23, 2018

Restaurant servers and other on-site staff scored a victory today when President Trump signed the budget into law along with a provision that keeps tips in servers' pockets instead of diverting them to restaurant ownership. Restaurant workerswon bipartisan support to include a provision in the omnibus budget bill Thursday. Today that bill became law along with codification of protections for tipped restaurant workers against employers, supervisors and managers taking any portion of their tips. 

This "represents a historic victory for restaurant workers," Restaurant Opportunities Centers United co-founder and President Saru Jayaraman, said in an email to this website. "The National Restaurant Association wanted to steal workers' tips, but the workers said no — and they won. The fact that hundreds of thousands of workers stood up and said no to employers taking their tips, and that Congressional leadership listened and acted, is a testament to the power of workers standing up together."

The U.S. Department of Labor had proposed a rule allowing employers to keep their workers' tips when they earned minimum wage. That proposal mobilized ROC membership and other restaurant workers and their allies nationwide, who sent public comments largely opposing the action to Congress. ROC United also testified against the provision in congressional hearings around it and participated in protest actions in front of 20 cities' U.S. Labor Department buildings. They also dropped off a banner at DOL headquarters in Washington, D.C. that carried the message, "Trump, Don't Steal Our Tips!" 

Meanwhile, as this site has previously reported, the National Restaurant Association and its leadership supported the measure in a number of actions. Earlier today, before the budget was signed into law, the NRA sent this qualified response to this week's action in an email to this website. 

"As the voice for restaurants in every local community, we want to ensure that servers, bussers, dishwashers, cooks and others who work as a team to provide great customer service in the industry have access to share in tips left by customers, as this legislation clearly allows," the NRA's Restaurant Law Center Executive Director Angelo I. Amador said in the email. "We are also pleased that the illegal 2011 rule enacted by the previous Administration is being eliminated by this legislation, but our concern is the enforcement and penalty language for unintentional violations goes too far." 

National Employment Law Project Executive Director Christine Owens said from the worker standpoint, they had a lot of support on Capitol Hill in this week's actions.

"We want to extend our deepest gratitude to members of Congress who were instrumental in this victory, including Reps. Rosa DeLauro (CT) and Katherine Clark (MA), whose tough questioning of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta during an appropriations hearing revealed an opening for a possible bipartisan agreement," she said in a news release. "They quickly followed up by introducing legislation. 
 
"And we also extend our deepest thanks to Sen. Patty Murray for skillfully negotiating this agreement, and to Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for getting it across the finish line. Thanks to their efforts ... we will have perfect clarity in the Fair Labor Standards Act on who owns tips, and workers will be able to claim full legal rights to their own tips."