News

Senate bill allows hotel workers 100% access to service charge

The Senate on Monday approved on third and final reading a measure that would allow restaurant and hotel employees 100 percent access to service charges collected from customers.

Once Senate Bill No. 1299 is enacted into law, restaurant and hotel workers, whether regular, contractual, or agency-hired, would be entitled to a 100 percent service charge as long as they would directly deliver the service to their customers.

Senator Joel Villanueva, principal author, and sponsor of Senate Bill No. 1299, said the proposed measure seeks to “address the injustice brought upon our hardworking workers in the service industry who provide the actual service but rarely get their proper share in the collection.”

At present, restaurant and hotel workers are given only 85 percent of the total tips collected from customers while management retained the remaining 15 percent.

Management gets 15 percent of the service charge proceeds to answer for losses or breakages. However, if there were no losses or breakages, the 15 percent was the management’s prerogative for disposition or distribution among managerial employees.

Villanueva, chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, filed his measure saying sharing distribution had not changed since it became law in 1975.

“The bill does not make the collection of service charge mandatory to avoid interference with the right to management to exercise discretion in the operation of their business. The proposed 100 percent service charge for our workers would benefit both the workers and the employers,” Villanueva said in his sponsorship speech.

Related Articles

Back to top button