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Local restaurant workers denounce proposed federal regulations to put tip control in employers hands

Craig Toocheck
/
freeimages.com

A coalition of area labor leaders and restaurant workers will be holding a press conference Monday to denounce the proposed federal regulation allowing employers to control workers' tips.

Zakary Skinner is a local restaurant worker said the issue isn’t with pooled tipping, which he believes isn’t necessarily a bad practice; its the idea that tips would be distributed at an owners discretion.

"Right now there is at least some process where we have control over those tips so we have a right to those tips. And this will kind of put it up to the employers."

Skinner said the problem is that there would be less in place to stop an employer from shorting tips to workers, and that this possible change makes the worker even more vulnerable.

"It takes away another aspect of transparency which is already an issue in the restaurant industry, that we don’t know those big numbers where profits coming from, how that’s all working out. It takes one more element of transparency from us."

He local said groups are also working on fixing other issues in restaurants including the fight for a fair minimum wage and raising awareness of sexual harassment in the industry.