BY SHARON BLOCK AND CHRISTINE OWENS
Newsweek

If the Trump administration has its way, the tip you leave your waiter or waitress could end up in the pocket of the restaurant owner instead of the person who served you.

This week, Trump’s Labor Department proposed rescinding an Obama-era rule that made the logical point that tips are the property of the servers and cannot be taken by the restaurant owner.

The administration’s proposal would allow restaurant owners who pay their wait staff as little as $7.25 per hour to collect all the tips left by patrons and do whatever they want with them—regardless of what diners intended.
 

Link to TRUMP WANTS YOU TO TIP RESTAURANT OWNERS, NOT SERVERS in Newsweek

Also referenced in:  on December 12, 2017 [Read Article]... Read more about TRUMP WANTS YOU TO TIP RESTAURANT OWNERS, NOT SERVERS

By Ben Penn
Bloomberg BNA

The Labor Department wants to remove an Obama-era regulation that restricted the circumstances in which employers could force workers to share tips. The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, in a proposed rule released Dec. 4, calls for rescinding the 2011 regulation that prohibited restaurants, bars, and other service industry employers from requiring front-of-house employees, such as servers, to share tips with back-of-house workers, such as cooks and dishwashers...The department’s analysis that unwinding this rule will improve workplace conditions for restaurant employees was immediately opposed by worker advocates and former DOL officials in the Obama administration. “There is nothing” in the proposed rule “that would preclude an employer from keeping the tips of workers as long as he’s paid them $7.25 an hour,” Sharon Block, LWP Director, told Bloomberg Law.

By Hamilton Nolan
Splinter

"The Trump administration is sure to be hell for working people, but so far the actual Labor Secretary has been relatively quiet on the specifics. Today we have a new item to add to his list of Ways to Egregiously Stomp on The Poor: fucking with worker centers."

Sharon Block, in OnLabor.org blog, "Backhanded Compliment: Acosta Threatens Workers Centers." explains "Backhanded Compliment: Acosta Threatens Workers Centers" the only real purpose for reclassifying worker centers is to make their lives harder by requiring them to do a ton of paperwork and follow a ton of new rules. There is no threat being addressed here, except the threat that day laborers might be paid a semi-living wage.

by Celine McNicholas, Labor Counsel, Economic Policy Institute and
Sharon Block, Executive Director of the LWP, Harvard Law School
American Constitution Society for Law and Policy 

Today, 24.7 million American workers have been forced to sign contracts that, as a condition of employment, require them to waive their rights to joining a class action lawsuit to address sexual harassment and other workplace disputes—instead these workers must act alone to resolve what is often systemic violations of employment protections.... Read more about Supreme Court will decide if women can join together to fight sexual harassment at work

By Sharon Block 
in Quartz

"If we are serious about making corporations more responsive to how their workers are treated, we need structural reform that will give workers a voice in the governance of their own work lives and the right to bring a greater diversity of views before the board."

By STEVE LOHR
New York TImes,  Education Life

"Michael S. Teitelbaum, an expert on science education and policy and LWP Senior Research Associate, believes that STEM advocates, often executives and lobbyists for technology companies, do a disservice when they raise the alarm that America is facing a worrying shortfall of STEM workers, based on shortages in a relative handful of fast-growing fields like data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and computer security."... Read more about Where the STEM Jobs Are (and Where They Aren’t)

By Andrea Vittorio
On Bloomberg BNA

Many companies collect metrics on employee training, fatalities, and other aspects of so-called human capital, but they often don’t report that information publicly, according to an Oct. 23 study from Harvard Law School.

By Sandy Smith 
In EHS Today

Human capital metrics, including occupational safety and health data, frequently are collected by a majority of global companies, yet many of these firms are not publicly reporting the information, according to a study released Oct. 23 by the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program in conjunction with the Center for Safety and Health Sustainability (CSHS). The study is: "Corporate Disclosure of Human Capital Metrics," authored by Aaron Bernstein and Larry Beeferman of the Harvard Law School Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project,

BY THOR BENSON
In In These Times

“It could have a devastating effect on employees being able to, possibly, hold any employer accountable for wage, hour and [National Labor Relations Act] violations,” Sharon Block says, noting that such a change would be unprecedented in labor law.

By John Trumpbour and Chris Tilly
LaborNotes.org

"Harvard appears to be banking on Trump appointees to the Labor Board to help fight off graduate student unionization. But Harvard’s going the extra mile in seeking to undermine all unions’ right to an accurate list of employees during a union election campaign."

Op-ed by Thomas Piketty 
in LeMonde

What should we think of the reform of the Labour Code defended by the government?   Isabelle Ferreras, LWP Senior Research Associate,  has defended the idea of genuine bicameralism in firms with shareholders’ councils and worker’s councils being obliged to agree and to adopt the same strategic texts and decisions.... Read more about Re-thinking the capital code

By: Lisa Wogan
The VIN News Service 

Richard Freeman was referenced in article  about veterinary personnel looking to organize. it’s about more than wages, Hughston said. “We’re talking about things like work/life balance, like respecting professional boundaries, like making sure we have safe procedures and protocols in place, that we have safe levels of staffing,” she said.