She predicted that if the regulation took effect and employers decided to share tips with these workers, “their base pay would be reduced and there would be no more take-home pay.”

The Labor Department estimated that the rule would affect about one million waiters and waitresses and over 200,000 bartenders. Workers in other industries, like hairstylists and manicurists, would also be affected.

Many tipped workers would not be affected, however, because the law would continue to prevent employers from taking the tips of those who earned less than the minimum wage. The law allows workers to be paid below the minimum wage as long as their tips make up the difference.

The proposed rule has generated a surprising amount of attention, attracting more than 180,000 comments from the public by Friday. That is roughly two-thirds the number of comments that the Obama administration’s proposal to increase overtime eligibility — which affected millions more workers and nearly every industry — generated after it was formally unveiled in 2015.

At least one major business group and some restaurant owners wrote that the rule would allow employers to put in place new pay practices that benefited both them and workers.

“It used to be that our servers typically made 1.5 to two times more than our kitchen staff, which is a big gap, but now they make two to four times more,” wrote Kim Snuggerud, who owns the Hilo Bay Cafe in Hawaii. “This gap can be better managed with this change in the regulations. The wage disparity creates many problems, from morale issues to higher turnover.”