Trump Targets Obama Rule on Workers’ Tips

The Trump administration is planning to quash an Obama-era rule that prevents employers from pooling workers’ tips.

The change could allow restaurants to share tips waiters receive, for example, with untipped employees such as kitchen cooks.

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Raj Nayak, director of research at the National Employment Law Project (NELP), said workers rely on their tips to get by and that when customers tip, they believe that money is actually going to the worker.

When you tip at the car wash, he said, you expect that money to go to the person who just washed your car.

“If you take this rule away, employers can do whatever they want … even take a percentage of the tip,” he said. “Or all of it.”

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For now, there’s uncertainty on both sides in the debate as the restaurant industry pushes its legal fight and the Labor Department works on the new rule.

“I think we won’t have a great sense of what’s in it until we see the proposed rule,” said Nayak.

Read the full article at The Hill.