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File photo. Shutterstock/Jan Faukner

Bill aims to give hospitality workers the right to keep their tips

Research carried out in Galway found that 34% of workers regularly had their employers withhold their tips.

A BILL COMING before the Seanad on Wednesday aims to give staff in restaurants, bars and cafes a right to keep the tips they earn from customers.

The Protection of Employee Tips Bill seeks to amend the National Minimum Wage Act to add protections to ensure that employees receive the tips paid by customers.

If passed into law it would make it illegal for an employer to withhold, deduct, or demand the return of a tip from an employee without a lawful excuse.

It would also require businesses to display their tipping policy on a menu or in a similarly prominent manner.

Sinn Féin Senator Paul Gavan, who is putting forward the bill, said research carried out by the party in Galway found that 34% of workers regularly had their employers withhold their tips.

“There have been numerous surveys and testimonies highlighting that workers are often denied the right to take home tips they have earned,” Senator Gavan said.

Good employers have nothing to fear from this Bill, as they will already be passing on their tips to their employees. The Bill will also do nothing to change current tax revenue rules, so there’s no downside to this, unless you happen to be a bad employer.

Last year an investigation by TheJounal.ie found that tipping was one of several areas in which workers in the hospitality sector face exploitation by employers.

The Sinn Féin bill also took inspiration from a 2016 report  by the UK government which recommended that charges imposed on staff tips by employers should be scrapped or limited, while service charges on customers should be shown clearly with an emphasis on their voluntary nature.

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    Mute Celticspirit321
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    May 20th 2015, 3:10 PM

    Tesla invented a way to wirelessly transfer electricity. Free electricity. That was years ago. Corporations didn’t like it. No profit for them.

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    Mute Neal Ireland Hello
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    May 20th 2015, 3:46 PM

    Or to put it another way, the concept was financially unviable.

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    Mute Thomas Murphy
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    May 20th 2015, 6:00 PM

    It also caught fire when being shown to investers if I remember correctly. Not that I was there, just that I heard it somewhere.

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    Mute One Human Being
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    May 20th 2015, 8:27 PM

    So wardenclyffe http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower was a success it just was denied money because tesla had developed a way of pulling electricity from the ionosphere. Replication of this technology has been tried with haarp http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program good stuff by the great man who was not in it for the money unlike his great rival Thomas Edison.

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    Mute R39CRW8f
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    May 21st 2015, 12:46 AM

    When Edison tried to show the world the dangers of electricity (a.c vs his d.c) he did so by publicly electrocuting an elephant using AC current. It was so powerful that the elephant caught fire.. As did the first prisoner on whom it was used as an execution method…
    Nothing to do with his free electricity system though.

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    Mute The Hooded Biscuit
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    May 21st 2015, 12:29 AM

    AirDrop doesn’t work

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