White House Learns Its Tip-Robbing Plan Will Rob Waiters. Guess What Happened Next.

[Hortensis]

69. Well, an Obama law makes tips the property of the employee,

although they may be distributed in a "valid tip pool" shared among TIPPED employees only.
Distributing them among all employees would drop incomes for tipped workers enormously.

Even if that amendment stayed and owners couldn't legally pocket any of the tips directly (note, massive theft would be inevitable), it would nevertheless mean a transfer of tip income to restaurant owners since, of course, many owners would drop pay rates for nontipped workers to offset the new income, including hiring at lower rates.

This isn't just not huge, it's a continuation of the usual scheme to transfer workers' wealth and power upward. Let them eat food stamps.

Plus, I'm not as comfortable as you that that Democratic rep's amendment would be in any bill passed. If it was removed, if employers paid tipped workers minimum wage, all tips would become the property of the employer. Again, although employees would insist on seeing some agreed amount returned to them, massive theft would be inevitable.

I didn't know that some conservative wingnuts consider tip pooling socialistic. That's funny considering the completely opposite purpose behind this. Some people are born fools.

Obama-era FLSA rule: Tipped employees are those who customarily and regularly receive more than $30 per month in tips. Tips are the property of the employee. The employer is prohibited from using an employee’s tips for any reason other than as a credit against its minimum wage obligation to the employee (“tip credit”) or in furtherance of a valid tip pool.

The requirement that an employee must retain all tips does not preclude a valid tip pooling or
sharing arrangement among employees who customarily and regularly receive tips, such as waiters, waitresses, bellhops, counter personnel (who serve customers), bussers, and service bartenders. A valid tip pool may not include employees who do not customarily and regularly received tips, such as dishwashers, cooks, chefs, and janitors.

But if they decide to follow the DOL’s new rule, and they don’t take the tip credit, and instead pay minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to all their employees, then tips are no longer considered the property of the employee; they become property of the employer. That employer could split those tips between back and front of the house. Then again, the employer could also keep them all.