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You're still talking about administrative decisions to compensate certain workers more or less. Again, if there is concern about workers being paid less, the so

by ruined 6y ago

You're still talking about administrative decisions to compensate certain workers more or less. Again, if there is concern about workers being paid less, the solution is to not lower their compensation. I have no problem with raising back-of-house wages, they are typically undercompensated compared to front-of-house, even though the work is comparable and all of it counts towards the dining experience. Raising kitchen wages does not necessitate lowering server wages, and suggesting it does only encourages division and confuses the situation. It is worth noting that tip pooling with kitchen staff is standard practice in many restaurants despite being flat out illegal until recently, so the situation you fear already exists, and could be remedied by moving away from a tipping system to explicit wages. Again, it is worth formalizing the relationship and clearly allocating responsibilities.

mannerheim 6y ago
> Again, if there is concern about workers being paid less, the solution is to not lower their compensation. Then kitchen staff will continue to be paid poorly. Just understand that's the tradeoff. > Raising kitchen wages does not necessitate lowering server wages How? > It is worth noting that tip pooling with kitchen staff is standard practice in many restaurants despite being flat out illegal until recently It's still illegal in many states. Meyer, one of the restaurateurs who switched to no-tipping and back, is in New York, where it's illegal both to add a service charge and to collect part of the tips to share with kitchen staff. Switching to no-tipping allowed him to compensate the kitchen staff more fairly, at the expense of the departure of his entire waitstaff.
- ruined 6y ago
  >Then kitchen staff will continue to be paid poorly. Just understand that's the tradeoff. If it’s a tradeoff it’s only a tradeoff that management chooses to make. >How? How what? It’s a business operating within a market. They will do something. None of this is a binary mechanistic outcome determined by a boolean of tipped or untipped service. The restaurant has a budget and they will spend money and set prices as they think best, and succeed or fail based on that. There is no law that dictates zero-sum competition between kitchen and server wages, and all else static! Clearly in a market in which tipping is not practiced, a business will behave differently than the current market, and employees will expect appropriate wages. >meyer etc etc this is still another case of an employer making administrative choices about how much to pay different workers, and workers reacting to those decisions. if the waitstaff were given an equivalent or better wage to their previous wage+tip compensation, they would have had no reason to depart. this was explicitly not the case: the servers left because the transition gave them a pay cut. it makes no sense to blame tipping or not tipping for bad budgeting and failed wage negotiations. the issue is in the allocation, not the concept. again, this is a case of employers deflecting responsibility for compensating their employees.
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    If you're making the same amount of money as you did before, and you're paying the kitchen staff more, how are you going to pay waitstaff more?
    - ruined 6y ago
      the economic calculus of a restaurant does not massively change based on a switch from tipped service to untipped service. there is still money coming in and food going out. i am advocating that employers be held responsible for paying their employees. the current tipped service regime fails to attribute that responsibility to employers, and leaves employees vulnerable. i have seen no-tip service implemented in a way that satisfied employees. i have seen also it done in a way that drove staff to quit, and in those cases the fault lay entirely with management trying to reduce compensation. stop asking questions about a fantasy budget. i do not care. if tipped service was abolished tomorrow, employers would figure it out.
      - mannerheim 6y ago
        > i have seen no-tip service implemented in a way that satisfied employees. Have you seen no-tip service implemented with waitstaff earning as much as they did before? > if tipped service was abolished tomorrow, employers would figure it out. Of course they would figure it out if tipped service were abolished. But I am confident the outcome of whatever they figured out would result in lower take-home pay for waitstaff, as waitstaff would no longer be able to earn more money by switching to an establishment that allowed tips.
        ruined 6y ago
        >Have you seen no-tip service implemented with waitstaff earning as much as they did before? Yes. This entire thread is just me telling you repeatedly for twenty-four hours that equivalent compensation is the only thing that works.
        6y ago

by ruined 6y ago

mannerheim 6y ago

> Again, if there is concern about workers being paid less, the solution is to not lower their compensation. Then kitchen staff will continue to be paid poorly. Just understand that's the tradeoff. > Raising kitchen wages does not necessitate lowering server wages How? > It is worth noting that tip pooling with kitchen staff is standard practice in many restaurants despite being flat out illegal until recently It's still illegal in many states. Meyer, one of the restaurateurs who switched to no-tipping and back, is in New York, where it's illegal both to add a service charge and to collect part of the tips to share with kitchen staff. Switching to no-tipping allowed him to compensate the kitchen staff more fairly, at the expense of the departure of his entire waitstaff.

ruined 6y ago
>Then kitchen staff will continue to be paid poorly. Just understand that's the tradeoff. If it’s a tradeoff it’s only a tradeoff that management chooses to make. >How? How what? It’s a business operating within a market. They will do something. None of this is a binary mechanistic outcome determined by a boolean of tipped or untipped service. The restaurant has a budget and they will spend money and set prices as they think best, and succeed or fail based on that. There is no law that dictates zero-sum competition between kitchen and server wages, and all else static! Clearly in a market in which tipping is not practiced, a business will behave differently than the current market, and employees will expect appropriate wages. >meyer etc etc this is still another case of an employer making administrative choices about how much to pay different workers, and workers reacting to those decisions. if the waitstaff were given an equivalent or better wage to their previous wage+tip compensation, they would have had no reason to depart. this was explicitly not the case: the servers left because the transition gave them a pay cut. it makes no sense to blame tipping or not tipping for bad budgeting and failed wage negotiations. the issue is in the allocation, not the concept. again, this is a case of employers deflecting responsibility for compensating their employees.
- mannerheim 6y ago
  If you're making the same amount of money as you did before, and you're paying the kitchen staff more, how are you going to pay waitstaff more?
  - ruined 6y ago
    the economic calculus of a restaurant does not massively change based on a switch from tipped service to untipped service. there is still money coming in and food going out. i am advocating that employers be held responsible for paying their employees. the current tipped service regime fails to attribute that responsibility to employers, and leaves employees vulnerable. i have seen no-tip service implemented in a way that satisfied employees. i have seen also it done in a way that drove staff to quit, and in those cases the fault lay entirely with management trying to reduce compensation. stop asking questions about a fantasy budget. i do not care. if tipped service was abolished tomorrow, employers would figure it out.
    - mannerheim 6y ago
      > i have seen no-tip service implemented in a way that satisfied employees. Have you seen no-tip service implemented with waitstaff earning as much as they did before? > if tipped service was abolished tomorrow, employers would figure it out. Of course they would figure it out if tipped service were abolished. But I am confident the outcome of whatever they figured out would result in lower take-home pay for waitstaff, as waitstaff would no longer be able to earn more money by switching to an establishment that allowed tips.
      - ruined 6y ago
        >Have you seen no-tip service implemented with waitstaff earning as much as they did before? Yes. This entire thread is just me telling you repeatedly for twenty-four hours that equivalent compensation is the only thing that works.
        6y ago