I am furious. This morning we learned that the Department of Labor — which has proposed a dangerous new rule that would allow employers to pocket their employees’ tips — CONCEALED an analysis by its own staff that showed the proposal would cost workers billions of dollars. Instead of releasing the analysis to the public, according to a report by Bloomberg [1], the agency’s leadership instead hid the information and claimed it couldn’t estimate the full economic effects of transferring ownership of tips from the employees who earned them to their employers.

This cover-up shows that the rule was never meant to help working people.And women, who make up two-thirds of tipped workers, would lose the most. The Department of Labor must withdraw the rule now — not only because it would cost working women $4.6 billion a year, but because the integrity of the rule-making process has been compromised by the agency’s deception. Tell the Department of Labor it must withdraw the tip-stealing rule now.

As someone who fights for economic opportunity for women, I am disgusted by the Trump administration’s attempts to bury the truth just so it can empower employers to steal women’s wages. Please join me in telling the Department of Labor it won’t get away with it. Comments on this rule close in just a few days, so now is the moment to make our voices heard.

Thank you for fighting back with me!

Sincerely,
Julie Vogtman
Director of Job Quality and Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

[1] https://bnanews.bna.com/daily-labor-report/labor-dept-ditches-data-on-worker-tips-retained-by-businesses