Employees at BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse in Modesto are seeking to form the company's first union, saying a mandatory tip-sharing policy has sharply cut into their pay.

Michael Williams, a server and union president, said the company began requiring servers and bartenders to hand over 4% of their total sales to back-of-house staff. He said the policy has reduced front-of-house earnings by about 20%.

"They implemented a 4% of sales tip share, and what that did was it pretty much cut the servers' and bartenders' pay by approximately 20%," Williams said.

Workers say the system leaves them vulnerable when customers don't tip.

"For instance, if we had a $100 tab and I got no tip on that, I'm negative four, so that's gonna get taken out of my next tips," Williams said.

He added that the com

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