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– New changes to Labor Department rules are being called a “ year-end victory ” for the restaurant industry, according to the National Restaurant Association, although servers relying on tips to raise their sub-minimum wages may not get the thumbs up. Fox Business reports on a revision made by the DOL last Tuesday that now allows employers to mandate a “ tip pool, ” in which tipped employees, such as waiters and bartenders, must hand over some of their tips to non- tipped employees, including dishwashers and cooks. Proponents of the rule change, which will go into effect in February and vary by state, say it will help close the wage differentials between the workers who work for tips and those who don’t, by investing an additional $ 109 million DOL estimates in the pockets of back-of-house workers.
Restaurant Business Online notes that because of this current pay gap, it can be difficult to find back-of-house help. However, servers may grumble that they now have to split their tips, and another Labor Department crew isn’t going to make them any happier: According to CBS News, a previous limit on how much time tipped employees could spend on untipped work, such as helping set up or cleanup has been removed. Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute nonprofit, says this could lead to big savings for restaurants, as servers are typically paid far less than employees who usually perform those untimed tasks, but tipped employees can lead to Missing out on $ 700 million a year. year as a result of this rule change, according to EPI estimates last year. “You don’t solve the low wages of the lowest-paid workers by taking it out of the wages of the second-lowest-paid workers,” Shierholz told CBS. “You pay them more.” (Read more tip stories.)