Media clips
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The Trump administration’s proposed change to tipping would cost workers $5.8 billion a year and overwhelmingly affect women, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. The public comment period ends in three weeks. As women’s marches take place across the United States this Saturday, time is running out to put in your two cents about a rule proposed by the Trump administration that a new report says could cost female workers $4.6 billion dollars in tips a year. The Department of Labor wants to rescind Obama-era rules that barred employers from seizing their workers’ tips. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute found that the change could cost tipped workers overall $5.8 billion dollars a year. Study co-author Heidi Shierholz said women would take 80 percent of the hit.’ (whole story)
CBS News Las Vegas January 19, 2018 -
Graduate students across the country are fighting for the right to collective bargaining. Hear students from Columbia University tell how they succeeded. Also, listen as Baltimore Teachers Union President Marietta English shares the teachers’ perspective on this month’s big chill at BCPS. (Interview with Marni)
WOLB January 19, 2018 -
In December, the Department of Labor proposed a rule that would rescind portions of tip regulations, allowing employers who pay the minimum wage to take workers’ tips. According to Economic Policy Institute research, tipped workers would lose $5.8 billion a year in tips as a result of this rule. Women in tipped jobs would lose $4.6 billion annually. (whole story)
Think Progress January 18, 2018 -
As women’s marches take place across the country this Saturday, time is running out to put in your two cents about a rule proposed by the Trump administration that a new report says could cost female workers $4.6 billion in tips a year. The Department of Labor wants to rescind Obama-era rules that barred employers from seizing their workers’ tips. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute found that the change could cost tipped workers overall $5.8 billion a year. Study co-author Heidi Shierholz says women would take 80 percent of the hit. (whole story)
Public News Service January 18, 2018 -
President Donald Trump’s war on workers has spawned a number of disastrous policy moves, from cuts to federal employees’ pay increases to directives making it harder for workers to unionize. But one of the “nastiest” policy shifts Trump is pursuing is a rule that would allow companies to steal their employees’ tips—which, according to a new report, would cost workers $5.8 billion a year. Published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on Wednesday, the analysis also details the disproportionate impact the proposed rule would have on women, whose tips would account for nearly 80 percent—$4.6 billion—of the total stolen by employers. (whole story)
Common Dreams January 18, 2018 -
A new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit think tank, estimates American workers could lose up to $5.8 billion in tips if the proposal is finalized; moreover, they estimate that women would be impacted the most. According to the report, 80 percent of tipped jobs — ranging from restaurant workers to bartenders to hair stylists — employ women, and if implemented, this cohort of women could lose $4.6 billion in tips. “Because women are both more likely to be tipped workers and to earn lower wages, this rule would disproportionately harm them,” the report states. (whole story)
Salon January 18, 2018 -
Two of the Trump administration’s favorite pastimes are screwing over women and workers, from dialing back Title IX’s application in campus sexual assault cases and attempting to defund Planned Parenthood, to championing right-to-work legislation that would severely hamper labor unions and ditching an Obama-era regulation that ensures employees are compensated fairly for their overtime hours. A new rule under consideration by the Department of Labor would harm both women and workers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a new proposal that management be allowed to keep employees’ tips would cost women workers $4.6 billion annually, or approximately 80 percent of the $5.8 billion it would cost the industry overall. That $5.8 billion represents 16.1 percent of the estimated $36.4 billion tipped workers earn each year. (whole story)
AlterNet January 18, 2018 -
Trump’s war against workers continues. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the Department of Labor has proposed a rule that would allow employers to take employee tips, and does not require them to redistribute the funds. The biggest losers, EPI calculates, would be women: In other words, nearly 80 percent of the tips that would be taken by employers as a result of this rule would come out of the pockets of women and their families. (The specific share, calculated from unrounded numbers, is 78.7 percent.) Because women are both more likely to be tipped workers and to earn lower wages, this rule would disproportionately harm them. No word yet on how Ivanka Trump, who has presented herself as a prominent defender of working women, has taken this news. But the Department of Labor’s latest bit of rule-making isn’t an isolated incident. The administration wants to adjust the salary threshold for an Obama-era overtime rule; if it succeeds in raising the threshold, lower-wage workers will find themselves in possession of shrinking bank accounts. Trump also used his executive authority to roll back a number of regulations that would have protected worker safety. As his son Eric reminded us Wednesday morning, green is the only color Trump sees.
The New Republic January 18, 2018 -
The Trump administration plan to let bosses steal their workers’ tips would cost tipped workers $5.8 billion—and most of that would be taken from women. According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, $4.6 billion of that $5.8 billion in tip theft would hit women.
Daily Kos January 18, 2018 -
It’s still possible that robots contributed to a long-term economic decline that made Midwesterners more vulnerable to the scourge of opiates and the lure of xenophobia. But here, too, there is cause for skepticism. Edsall’s thesis relies on research by economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo that links robots to job losses and wage declines. But as Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute have shown, the paper’s conclusions are far more ambiguous than many journalists have been reporting.
Bloomberg January 17, 2018