If You Live in a Red State, the Trump Administration Wants to Steal Your Tips

The Trump administration has proposed a new rule that allows restaurant owners to collect all tips and then distribute them among both tipped and nontipped employees:

The proposal would help decrease wage disparities between tipped and non-tipped workers…such as restaurant cooks and dish washers. These “back of the house” employees contribute to the overall customer experience, but may receive less compensation than their traditionally tipped co-workers.

Isn’t that sweet? Trump is looking out for cooks and dishwashers, the hardworking, unsung heroes who keep our nation’s restaurants going. But perhaps you think maybe there’s more going on here? I don’t know what’s made you so cynical about our president, but just this one time you’re right. The Economic Policy Institute has done some calculations, and Eli Day reports on the fine print:

Here’s the rub: The rule doesn’t actually require that employers share those tips with untipped staff. Under the proposal, employers can pocket those tips as long as workers earn the minimum wage….According to EPI’s estimates, employers across the country are likely to pocket $5.8 billion worth of employees’ wages if the rule goes through, in addition to an estimated $50 billion in wage theft already occurring nationwide.

Here’s the funny thing: the Department of Labor is required by law to produce an estimate of the amount of tips that will be transferred from workers to employers under the proposed rule. But they didn’t. Is that because it’s impossible? Not at all: EPI includes a mind-numbingly complete appendix that explains their methodology—methodology that could easily be used by DOL’s wonks to create their own assessment. The problem, of course, is that DOL doesn’t want to produce an official document that suggests their rule will lead to billions of dollars in lower wages for working-class restaurant servers. So they didn’t. That’s the Trump way, after all. He’s a hero of the working class, haven’t you heard?

Anyway, this rule will affect different states differently, since some states have their own rules that protect tipped workers. Servers in blue states like California, Illinois, and New York have little to worry about. But the folks in red states who voted for Trump are about to get screwed big time. On average, servers in these states will lose nearly half of their tip income under the new rule—and that’s after accounting for their increased minimum wage. Here’s a map. Read it and weep.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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