Still time to sound off on tip pooling rule

The U.S. Department of Labor has extended the comment period on a new rule that some restaurant employees contend could lead to owners shorting them on a portion of their tips.

The issue has drawn the attention of actress Jane Fonda, a former New Mexico resident, who has recorded a video urging restaurant servers and other tipped employees to speak out against the measure, backed by the Trump administration.

“Restaurant servers are about to get totally screwed under a sneaky new rule,” said Fonda in the Facebook clip, which now has more than 16 million views. “The Department of Labor has proposed a new rule that will let restaurant owners legally steal their workers’ tips.”

The rule change would allow owners to mandate a concept known as tip pooling, where servers and others who earn tip income would be required to put the money in a pot so it can be distributed to dishwashers, cooks and others who don’t normally earn tips directly from customers.

Groups such as the National Restaurant Association have long favored the idea of tip pooling as a way to close the disparity between those who earn tips and other workers whose contributions to a positive dining experience can be just as important.

In fact, many restaurant patrons calculate their tips based on not only the qualities of a server or bartender, but the entire experience of dining or drinking out, including the atmosphere and quality of food.

But there have been problems with tip pooling — and the new rule doesn’t seem to offer any protections for employees who get 100 percent of what a restaurant receives from patrons. The rule doesn’t prohibit businesses from withholding tips to those earning beyond minimum wage. There also have been instances where a certain fee is charged by the restaurant for administering the tip pool, and the rule doesn’t prohibit this practice.

The Labor Department estimates there are approximately 1.08 million waiters and waitresses and 219,000 bartenders nationwide who receive tips in 280,000 establishments.

There is no doubt Santa Fe has a lot of tipped workers, and most restaurants here already have a shared-tip arrangement where back of the house workers get a portion of all the proceeds.

The reality is that with more and more restaurant meals being paid for with credit, debit and direct-payment applications from smartphones, it is harder than ever for individual workers to get paid their tip income without going through management and get “tipped out” at the end of a shift.

Still, the issue is emotional, because these same workers have low hourly wages in the range of $2 to $3 and rely on tips to pay basic monthly bills.

Comments on the rule will now be received until Feb. 5. For more information or to post a comment, go to the Department of Labor website — www.dol.gov/WHD/flsa/tipcreditnprm.htm.

The National Park Service has roads, trails, buildings, and water and sewer systems spread out over 400 locations. Together, these assets are like a small metropolis, with 12,500 miles of roads, 18,000 miles of trails, 28,000 buildings and 1,800 sewage systems.

According to a new report by the Cadmus Group for the Pew Charitable Trusts, more than 40,000 of these assets need some kind of repair or maintenance, and that work has the potential to create 110,000 jobs around the country — 1,132 jobs in New Mexico alone.

“As the NPS begins its second century, it is grappling with $11.3 billion in deferred maintenance at the more than 400 sites it manages,” writes Pew. “Roads are crumbling, trails are blocked, buildings are deteriorating, and water and sewer pipes are leaking. Years of inconsistent congressional funding have made it difficult for NPS to make all of the needed repairs, which means the agency has had to postpone less critical maintenance.”

National park sites in New Mexico saw 1.8 million visits in 2016, and that supported 1,685 jobs in the state, according to the analysis.