And if the bosses try to steal the tips and get caught, they face a $1,100 fine per occurrence – and they must repay the harmed worker double what they stole, the bill adds.

Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Katherine Clark, D-Mass., inserted the ban in the Labor Department section of the 2,232-page bill after a testy exchange earlier this month with Trump administration Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who defended his department’s plan to let bosses share – or take – workers’ tips.

But at the end, he yielded and told the two Democrats he would work with them on legislation to solve the issue of such rampant wage theft. That’s the ban inserted in the money bill, which passed on a bipartisan 256-167 vote.

The ban on bosses taking workers’ tips will help restaurant workers, who are overwhelmingly working women – many of them minorities – and part of the lowest-paid group of workers in the U.S. Estimates of wage theft from them are in the billions of dollars, all from workers who can least afford it.

Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC), which represents thousands of those low-wage workers – especially in big cities – called it “an historic victory for restaurant workers. The National Restaurant Association wanted to steal workers’ tips, but the workers said no — and they won.” 

“That hundreds of thousands of workers stood up and said no to employers taking their tips, and congressional leadership listened and acted, is a testament to the power of workers standing up together,” she said. 

The tipped wage language came after the Labor Department proposed a rule that would have allowed restaurant owners to force their waiters and bartenders hand over their tips. Restaurant and bar owners could have used the rule to redistribute the tips to other workers like cooks and dishwashers - but there was nothing in it that kept owners from simply keeping the money to enhance their bottom lines. 

“The law cannot be more clear: Tips belong to workers and no one else,” said National Employment Law Project Executive Director Christine Owens. “This landmark victory belongs to all the restaurant servers, bartenders, car wash workers, valets, attendants, and all the other tipped workers in America who fought back when the Trump administration proposed its misguided tip-stealing rule.” 

“They wrote in, held protests, signed petitions, and spoke out. That’s what brought Labor Department officials and lawmakers to the table to hash out this historic agreement.”

The Department of Labor’s wage theft plan led workers and their allies to mobilize nationwide with protests in 20 cities. Around 350,000 restaurant workers commented against the rule. In D.C., ROC’s protesters draped a 7-foot “Trump, Don’t Steal Our Tips” banner draped down the front of DOL’s headquarters.

“Protecting workers’ tips from managerial tip theft would also protect a mostly female workforce from exacerbated sexual harassment,” Jayaraman said.