With a new law in place, all sides are claiming victory in the tipping wars
Tucked into Congress’s 2,200-plus-page omnibus spending bill are a few paragraphs that will prohibit restaurant owners from sharing server tips with supervisors, managers and themselves. But the provision will also allow employers, in some circumstances, to share tips with dishwashers, cooks and other back-of-the-house employees who have traditionally been underpaid compared with their counterparts in the dining room.
Signed into law Friday by President Trump as part of the $1.3 trillion spending deal, the new provision gives the restaurant association what it says it wanted all along in its ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor: the freedom for employers to establish pools to share server tips with other hourly workers in the restaurant, especially low-paid line cooks and dishwashers. The idea is that the extra cash will help owners retain back-of-the-house employees and balance the income disparities between line cooks and dishwashers (often Latino) and servers and bartenders (frequently white).
With a new law in place, all sides are claiming victory in the tipping wars - The Washington Post