Posted on 03/25/2018 12:24:00 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The spending bill, which President Donald Trump signed into law on Friday, includes a section that makes it clear that employers may not pocket any portion of tips that diners leave for workers...
Representatives for the restaurant industry, however, are also pleased.
The National Restaurant Association said it never asked for employers to be allowed to keep tips in the first place. Angelo Amador, senior VP at the trade group, argued that most employers wouldn't skim tips even if they were allowed to...
The language in the spending bill also effectively does another big thing: It allows employers to pool tips and distribute them among staff, as long as the employer also pays the full minimum wage. Many owners have long sought to boost the pay of kitchen workers and bussers by forcing servers to share their tips...
That's fine with labor advocates at the National Employment Law Project, who say that pooling tips is a good way to create wage equity, as long workers are paid the full minimum wage and tips aren't shared with managers or any other supervisors.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
For the government to say where the tip goes, the government is acting like they are the owner of the tip.
From a property rights point of view, when was the control of the property conceded to the government?
Many owners have long sought to boost the pay of kitchen workers and bussers by forcing servers to share their tips...
Hey, here's an idea! Pay your kitchen workers and bussers more!
Tipping works. I work in a smaller restaurant so no busboy, but I always tip out the bartender and on crazy nights when the kitchen kills it I tip them out as well. On the nights I close I cover the chef’s after work cocktails.
They work hard to keep customers happy and usually happy customers tip well. Even happy customers can be cheap sometimes. I recently had a reservation for 13 people. 17 people showed up. We quickly hauled another table from the back room (it was a busy night) and set it up for them. They ordered lots of appetizers and the drinks were flowing. The kitchen killed it and got their appetizers and entrees out quite quickly. Hostess helped me run the food and all went extremely smoothly. A 15% tip would have been $70. I was thinking about how I was going to tip out everyone because they all worked so hard on a tough night. I separated all the tabs and when I delivered them I heard the sticker shock the customers experienced. They were swearing when they saw their tabs. Prices were on the menu and no one forced them to drink so much. Needless to say that despite a fantastic experience the tips were awful-probably around 5%. It was a large reservation at the end of the evening so most of my section had been blocked off for them through the dinner rush. They were pretty much my only opportunity to make money that night. Hard to tip out the kitchen when that happens.
This is the real issue here, much like the Demoncrats demands for Universal Background Checks.
I thought most tips were shared among the entire staff.
That would have been in 2011 when the Obama administration passed a regulation preventing employers from tip pooling.
This new change gives the choice back to the employer. It does not require them to pool tips, but it does not prevent them from doing so either.
This is a successful roll back of an Obama-era regulation that restricted employer rights.
This can happen. Probably why many restaurants have ever a percentage tip automatically added to large parties.
I also had explained to me once in an ethnic restaurant that the workers were endentured servants
That’s an unenforceable advisory not a law unless there’s a penalty if they refuse to comply . Even then it may wind up in court.
“For the government to say where the tip goes, the government is acting like they are the owner of the tip.
From a property rights point of view, when was the control of the property conceded to the government?”
Control of wages was conceded to the government when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1913. Before that point in time the Constitution would not permit the government to impose taxes that were not uniform and direct taxes on property could not be assessed unless apportioned according to the census. The federal government could not tax individual property. The Supreme Court had ruled in Pollack vs Farmer’s Loan & Trust (1894) that taxes on incomes were unconstitutional unapportioned direct taxes.
The 16th Amendment allowed Congress to impose an income tax without apportioning it among the states. It exempted income taxes from the constitutional requirements limiting direct taxes.
With the passage of the 16th Amendment, the federal government became the owner of the fruits of an individual’s labor (income) and assumed the power to determine how much of the income paid to a citizen for labor the citizen would be allowed to keep. Today some citizens are rewarded through the income tax system by earned income credits and do not pay taxes. Others pay high taxes based on the political whims of Congress, and the fruits of their labor are distributed to others as Congress deems appropriate.
The 16th Amendment, allowing involuntary seizure of an individual’s property through the tax system, is in direct conflict with the 13 Amendment which abolished “involuntary servitude” immediately after the end of the Civil War. However, the Supreme Court and our politicians in Congress do not consider citizens working for wages in an economic system where the government arbitrarily determines how much of their productive efforts they can retain to be involuntary servitude.
Prior to the adoption of the 16th Amendement the activities of the federal government were funded by tariffs and duties. The politicians of the progressive movement desired to project American power and influence across the globe through acquisitions of colonies (Philippines and Puerto Rico for example) and a power navy supported by a standing army.
The Constitution had been carefully constructed to prohibit direct taxes in order to limit the income of the federal government as well as protect individual liberty of the citizens. At the time the 16th Amendment was adopted, its proponents claimed the income tax would be small, never more than 3%. In addition, by restricting the sources of income available to the federal government the founders were protecting the people from the federal government growing to the point it would become imperialistic, interfering in the affairs of foreign nations and becoming involved in alliances which the founders called “foreign entanglements”.
In hindsight the passage of the 16th Amendment was a watershed moment which removed a major impediment to tyranny from the central government. Since then the concept of limited government, completely subservient to the people, has been replaced by acceptance of an all powerful central government highly involved in the daily affairs of citizens, controlling commerce with a heavy hand, and projecting military power across the globe against the will and interests of the people.
Liberty died during the progressive era of the early 1900’s when the statists rewrote the constitution with the 16th Amendment, the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators), 18th Amendment (outlawing liquor), and the passage of the Federal Reserve Act (which created an “independent” central bank, with control of the currency, and not subject to any meaningful congressional oversight). The carefully crafted checks on the power of the central government were tossed aside by men who considered themselves superior to the masses and guided by a higher morality to be called on to exercise dominion over men for their own good. Other members of the elites in business and government perceived no high calling but supported the big central government because they could manipulate politicians to siphon off some of the taxes extracted from the general public for their own economic well being. Money = power and the unprecedented sums of money the federal income tax could siphon from the people was extremely attractive to special interests which used their share of the money distributed from the treasury to bribe politicians and create the endless cycle of corruption and big government tyranny that exists today.
As long as the federal government has the power to determine how much of the income a citizen can keep of the labor he earns, the citizen toils under a system of involuntary servitude. Those who produce in this country are wage slaves and in concept no different than the slave on the southern plantation of 1865 whose share of the fruits of his labor (food, clothing, shelter) were arbitrarily determined by the master. The only real difference is so far the chains are lighter and physical violence of the central government is rare although the federal government does routinely use its control over the legal system to ruin the lives of individuals it chooses to punish.
Once the current dream of the progressives to have a federal government controlled healthcare system is realized, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington will assume the arbitrary power of life and death over the average citizens through the denial of health care services to those who are deemed to no longer be of value to the state. One can only speculate how soon after government controlled single payer healthcare is in place the government will begin adopt mandatory euthanasia to eliminate the no longer productive elderly citizens, the permanently disabled, and the malcontents who oppose the central authority. Certainly the $500 million allocated to the Planned Parenthood abortion mills in the recently passed omnibus spending plan indicates the current members of Congress condone the murder of innocents enabled by funds extracted from the people.
In my experience, kitchen staff are paid an hourly wage starting at minimum wage, while servers are paid only a couple of bucks an hour as tipped employees. Asking tipped employees to share their tips with non tipped employees is wrong. Personally, I would rather do away with tipping.
“pooling tips is a good way to”
reward lazy, less efficient employees with the hard work of the productive.
This is about wait staff, NOT the kitchen staff.
What it usually means is that the bussing and kitchen staff, who do as much as the wait staff to produce the dining experience, get some of the tip money too.
Outstanding reply. Free of the day.
Back in the early 80s I worked in a restaurant in which the owner charged back 5% of the tips on Amex cards because that was her cost to allow patrons to use Amex.
Thank you for the thoughtful answer. Now I don’t know witch one is worse, the 16th or the 17th.
As far as tipping yes, restaurants are wise to let the waiter keep the tip, only for the reason that the waiter is their sales staff, the more they generate is sales, the better the restaurant does.
I LIKE that idea ... thanx.
“Thank you for the thoughtful answer. Now I don’t know witch one is worse, the 16th or the 17th.”
The 16th & 17th amendments, and the Federal Reserve Act are all equally evil.
The fourth blow and final blow to the Republic is abdication of its Constitutional responsibilities by the Congress. There is no longer a budget prioritization process. Budgeting is a political game that rewards the elites and favored groups at the expense of the people. Congress daily allows unelected bureaucrats and black robed tyrants to selectively enforce or void the laws it passes. It will not use its power of the purse, power of oversight, or power of impeachment to fight corruption.
The simple fact is the vast majority of men and women in Congress are thoroughly corrupt and immoral. Congress has exempted itself from insider trading and RICO laws that are routinely used by the federal government to ruin citizens. They are free to sell their votes for business deals that line their pockets. It is no coincidence schoolteachers like Dennis Hastert are elected to Congress and within a few years are multimillionaires. Even if there are a few members of Congress who have not embraced the corruption and debauchery of the capital city, by failing to call out the corruption they enable it.
The manipulation of markets and printing of money by the Federal Reserve to benefit the bankers, multinational corporations, and specific interest groups will ultimately result in hyperinflation, loss of reserve currency status, and the collapse of the economy. Our elites have sold out the nation to line their own pockets and massage their egos with power games. The people have tried to fight back with the Tea Party movement earlier this decade and the election of Trump in 2016. Unfortunately Trump’s capitulation on the omnibus bill suggests the job of draining the swamp is too big for one president under attack daily by the media, politicians of both parties, and 50% of the public. Just as the political polarization of 1860 could not be solved by the electoral process, the current division between those who still believe in the American dream and the corporate statists who control most institutions cannot be resolved peacefully. One side will have to completely destroy the other as there is no room for compromise. Likely whichever side wins, tyranny will follow just as it did when Caesar ended the Roman Republic.
Unfortunately most of the sheeple are asleep, enjoying their tax cuts, college basketball tournaments, the propaganda and mind numbing drivel produced by the media and Hollywood, mind wasting drugs and alcohol, and the sexual freedoms half a century of attacks on morality, religion, and culture have given them. To the young people of today, freedom is the ability to define one’s gender in the moment, engage in sexual relations once considered obscene, and the ability to silence voices they have been told are racist and hateful. The concepts of limited government, individual liberty, responsibility for their own actions, and respect for others are unknown to them. This is by design and the culmination of a 100 year effort by progressives to fundamentally change the nation. It is not accidental David Hogg, an ignorant and manipulated social activist wannabe, is paraded in front of the people by their elected representatives and the media as embodying the goodness and wisdom of today’s youth who are now ready to assume responsibility for governance.
History demonstrates a nation whose people who do not value their culture, or know their history, will ultimately experience anarchy and ruin. Until then the sheeple will continue to be mesmerized by what passes for entertainment while the elites who lord over them continue to pick clean what is left of the carcass of the US economy while enjoying their perverted pleasures behind the gates and guardhouses of their opulent homes and playgrounds.
I used to be an optimist. I now fear the die is cast and there is no correcting the course we are on unless Christ returns to earth in our time. The only question in my mind is whether or not I will live long enough to witness the collapse. I have been shocked by the acceleration of the decline into the abyss over the past decade. It feels as though anarchy is breaking out across the nation.
A restauranteur named Danny Meyer (author of Setting the Table ) was speaking to the Republican Governor’s Conference a few years back, and he was asked about what level of tip was appropriate. He replied that he would prefer to see the end of the tip system, and have the boss of each establishment decide who gets paid what.
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