11 ms·

How restaurant workers help pay for lobbying to keep their wages low

77 points by CaptainZapp 4y ago

haspoken 4y ago
https://archive.is/wmNNt https://archive.is/wmNNt
Overtonwindow 4y ago
TL;DR: trade association
roenxi 4y ago
The framing here annoys me on a lot of levels: 1) There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn't how wages work - that isn't how the price of most other things a business expenses is decided. 2) There is a frame that a "living wage" is some magic number. I remember "fight for $15" being a slogan somewhere. Which, given how long the fight takes, has probably become a Fight for $10 after inflation by now. The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them. Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be. Market inefficiencies usually make life worse for people with no money.
- justin66 4y ago
  > There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn't how wages work There are literally exceptions built into minimum wage law for tipped workers like restaurant workers.
  - bitcurious 4y ago
    >There are literally exceptions built into minimum wage law for tipped workers like restaurant workers. From when I was a waiter and had a weirdly slow week - it's not so much an exception as a change to how 'wage' is defined. Your total hourly income needs to be the minimum wage. If your tips+floor_wage>= minimum_wage, exception is in effect. If your tips+floor_wage< minimum_wage, floor_wage is increased until they are equal.
    - jimkleiber 4y ago
      I've often wondered, yes, that's the law, but do most restaurants actually do that?
      - rjbwork 4y ago
        They must by law, but what will likely happen is that if you complain, they'll do it the once and then fire you, since by their metrics you are performing poorly by not getting enough tips to even cover minimum wage.
- closewith 4y ago
  > Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. That's an assertion, not an axiom. It seems to work in the favour of low-paid employees in other developed counties.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    The unintended consequence is super high youth unemployment across a lot of Europe. Youth unemployment, meaning people from working age to about 25, is ~8% in the US, ~19% in France, 38% in Spain, 23% in Italy, 11% in Austria (not terrible), and only Germany and the Netherlands have lower rates than the US by 1-2%.
- flerchin 4y ago
  Have some empathy with servers that are literally paid $0 in their paychecks. Compare the state of things for servers in NY vs servers in CA and realize that your arguments do not hold up. The de facto $0 wage that servers are paid is a crime. It should end.
  - digerata 4y ago
    https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped I'm not sure what "de facto $0 wage" means.
    - flerchin 4y ago
      Their paychecks are $0. The entire check goes to the government.
      - dahfizz 4y ago
        Every server I know makes over $20/hr in tips minimum. Double that on a busy weekend. And they don't pay tax on it, so its really more like $25/hr minimum.
        flerchin 4y ago
        When it's slow, and their boss keeps them doing busy-work on penalty of losing their job, how much do they make? $0.
        dahfizz 4y ago
        That would be illegal.
        alocasia-1 4y ago
        You're not wrong, but generally speaking, trying to get your employer to make up the difference (as they are legally required to) is a good way to get fired.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them. Low pay and awkward, inconsiderate scheduling are not mysterious things that need to be explained.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    How to make pay go up is quite mysterious though, people seem to struggle with that. China has seen living standards double and double and double again because they worked hard and invested in capital. India too. Africa following the same path. I keep an eye on per-capita energy stats which suggest the average person living in China is locking in to a better living standard than the average person living in the UK. Seems likely that restaurant workers will be worse payed by the time I'm old. I fully acknowledge that it is easier to get a doubling in living standards in China than the US. But the strategies they are using are wildly different and most of the things China they are doing to achieve amazing outcomes have been made illegal in the US. Indeed, one of the strategies a lot of countries have used to get ahead is ... allow people to hire workers at low wages and keep local costs low enough that their people can save money. This has moved a lot of wealth from the West to other places. Indeed, stories of big lifestyle improvements from a minimum wage are practically non-existent. Big wins come from owning capital, saving hard, education and upskilling where success stories are common. The framing in this article isn't pushing people to think in those terms, it is pushing them to pick a fight with their employer. That is a strategy for people who are about to lose at economics. For example if restaurant workers want sustainable improvements they should be lobbying for mechanisms to get part-ownership of the business or educational bonuses - both of which are easier fights to win and would lead to better long term outcomes than raw wage increases.
    - bigthymer 4y ago
      What other strategies have other countries used?
      - 4y ago
- tarotuser 4y ago
  > 1) There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn't how wages work - that isn't how the price of most other things a business expenses is decided. That's exactly what minimum wage IS. And the other symbol that companies that pay minimum wage are also saying is "If I could pay you less, I would" > 2) There is a frame that a "living wage" is some magic number. I remember "fight for $15" being a slogan somewhere. Which, given how long the fight takes, has probably become a Fight for $10 after inflation by now. "Fight for 15$" has been going on since 2008. It really now should be "Fight for $25" But back when FDR did it, the minimum wage WAS the living wage. But it definitely should be pegged to a random subset of a wide variety of goods, or accept that not everyone in the country needs to work... But that second assertion likely wont happen in my lifetime in the USA. > The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them. Like, say, Unions? Again, without real teeth in the union laws with NLRB, corporations will just do illegal activities and pay the token fines, and get their way. You may not be able to fire a unionizer, but you can shut the store down for 3 months, lay everyone off, and rehire, flushing the union out. And completely legal. And the fines are laughable, like "you must rehire". > Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be. Market inefficiencies usually make life worse for people with no money. From a terrible libertarian take, that isn't indicative in most of the world (or even European sensibilities), this is laughably wrong. I've seen "trickle down". The only trickle I got was being peed on. And "market inefficiencies" don't care for things like, say, people, human suffering, climate change, or any of those externalities. Those are just inconvenient things to avoid to the "market".
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > "Fight for 15$" has been going on since 2008. It really now should be "Fight for $25" Exactly. This is also what pisses me off regarding reporting on strikes and wage negotiations. If you're going to report on these accurately, any raise less than the rate of inflation should be called a pay cut. The fact that some workers have to strike to get even a 2% pay increase in an 8% inflation environment is nuts.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Not in US, in plenty of "communist" European countries it is. No need for tipping at every opportunity.
  - tapland 4y ago
    You mean unions?
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      No, laws for minimum wages across specific industries. Naturally unions leverage on top of those laws.
      - rcme 4y ago
        It's really not about minimum wage. Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until 2014. Ultimately, it's about having a social safety net. As a worker, if you have a social safety net, then you can afford to form a union without worrying about the health and security of your family. Also, higher taxes disincentives such reckless profit seeking.
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Did I say every European country has it? Yeah it is sad that for all the progress on this country, it still lags behind on some safety nets in regards to poorer countries. I never understood the need to tip toilet workers instead of providing them a proper salary.
        rcme 4y ago
        No, you didn't say every European country has it, but many European countries don't have a minimum wage. Denmark, where McDonalds workers famously earn $22 an hour, does not have a minimum wage either. So clearly a legally defined minimum wage doesn't really matter in terms of average salary.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  I don't think you understood the article, at all. > National Restaurant Association This is not an association in the business of lobbying for cooks, waiters and bartenders. It is in fact in the business of making sure labor stays cheap. It is obviously not an association that should somehow be entrusted with mandatory safety training regulation; that is just corrupt regulatory capture.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Are you trying to say that Herman Cain wasn't a famous union leader?
- vimacs2 4y ago
  Your perspective seems to be completely orthogonal to reality. 1. That is actually how "wages work". The state decides what is the minimal possible wage and then businesses will pay that amount to low status workers because businesses seek to maximize the surplus value out of their workers. Suggesting that businesses will opt into paying their workers a living wage without an external pressure is laughable and ahistoric. 2. Nobody serious is suggesting that $15 is some magical number but given political reality, it seems like an easier sell than proposing a minimum salary that dynamically adjusts based on local cost of living and inflation. It would also be a massive increase relative to the abysmal figure it is today. "There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be." Such as the battle for minimum wage, the weekend, the 40 hour work week or the abolition of child labor? I'm waiting for a credible example of a pro worker regulation having overall negative consequences for workers.
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    The minimum wage is $0. If the law makes it illegal to hire workers at a price below the productivity they provide, they will not be hired.
    - vimacs2 4y ago
      That's a common piece of libertarian propaganda but what happens in reality is businesses are forced to offer decent wages to attract labor and the ones that don't, perish - as they should.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    > Such as the battle for minimum wage, the weekend, the 40 hour work week or the abolition of child labor? https://www.bls.gov/IAG/TGS/iag70.htm https://www.bls.gov/IAG/TGS/iag70.htm tells me that the average hospitality worker is working 25 hours a week. Did we have another huge fight to bring the 40 hour work week down to 25 hours? I suspect not, or people would talk about that instead of the 40 hour week. That victory looks a bit hollow - much like any successes in pitching a minimum wage of low single digit dollars per hour which has been rubbed out by inflation. Even the child labour one is interesting - children are unemployable regardless of the law, they don't have the skill, stamina or strength to participate meaningfully in a modern economy. It makes a difference, but this is a ban on something that doesn't make much economic sense to start with. This isn't a meaningful political question these days, the economy has no use for children. Child labour went the way of slavery - any society attempting to utilise it will get steamrollered by capitalists using productive techniques to do an order of magnitude better.
- talideon 4y ago
  Why should there be two minimum wages in the US? That's the most basic issue here.
- grecy 4y ago
  > Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. It has done precisely that in every developed country except the one with the most poverty, and an entirely unique class of people called the working class poor. Why doesn’t that class of people exist in any other developed country? Because of government control of wages.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  If you generally say that laws are written by lobbyists for the benefit of the group(s) that are in power at the expense of the powerless, no one bats an eye. But as soon as you start applying that to sacred cows like minimum wage, people fall into immediate cognitive dissonance.
korroziya 4y ago
So tired of this myth. Restaurant-workers/servers/bartenders make $2.15/hr plus tips. If that amount < minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. If they don't, they're breaking the law and any server with two brain cells to rub together can and should report them. Unless you're a really crappy server, you make more than minimum wage. Most bartenders make well more than minimum wage. If you want to change the TIPPING industry, that's a horse of a different color.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Commies love to talk about all these long-debunked straw men, like "trickle down economics" or the idea that economics isn't real because it assumes people are "rational."
- foepys 4y ago
  Is minimum wage enough to live, though?
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    Does it have to be?
- tarotuser 4y ago
  > Restaurant-workers/servers/bartenders make $2.15/hr plus tips. If that amount < minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. If they don't, they're breaking the law and any server with two brain cells to rub together can and shoukd report them. > Unless you're a really crappy server, you make more than minimum wage. Most bartenders make well more than minimum wage. Well, restaurant work is rife with tax fraud and misclassification of tips everywhere. So yeah, the servers get paid $2.15/hr and hope that tips covers it the rest of the way. Then again, ive seen sleazy shit, like "averaging out over 2 weeks" to make $7.35/hr, rather than the fact the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday they got a wage equal to $5.00/hr. Or restaurant managers will also demand servers do cleaning and other duties... which would be under $7.35/hr . How do you account for this time if the company/manager is cheating in this way? (Ive never seen a restaurant job switch the person's labor classification to do this.) That's right, you file a grievance with the Dept of Labor. I've been there, and done that. If you want a lawyer, you'll likely be denied since you make peanuts, so the case will be for peanuts. But when the DoL responds, like usually months later, it's likely a moot point. You MIGHT, at the end of a yearlong investigation, MIGHT get paid back for the time. Then again, maybe not. The company can afford lawyers. You cannot, getting paid $2.35/hr
pydry 4y ago
https://www.bustle.com/articles/32519-terrible-san-francisco-badideaca-billboard-tells-workers-ipads-can-replace-them https://www.bustle.com/articles/32519-terrible-san-francisco... This how the national restaurant association tried to lobby against a reduction in restaurant profits in California 10 years ago. They really are a terrible organization.
mhb 4y ago
This is pretty disingenuous: "That course is basic, with lessons like “bathe daily” and “strawberries aren’t supposed to be white and fuzzy, that’s mold.” " Part of the course includes time and temperature safety requirements which I don't think are obvious or intuitive to most people who are being employed as food handlers. Who should pay the $15 for the training is another issue. From: https://www.servsafe.com/access/SS/Catalog/ProductDetail/SSECT6 https://www.servsafe.com/access/SS/Catalog/ProductDetail/SSE... Covers five key areas: Basic Food Safety Personal Hygiene Cross-Contamination & Allergens Time and Temperature Cleaning and Sanitation
- pessimizer 4y ago
  This list is not evidence that the course is not basic. The word "basic" is the first word on the list.
  - mhb 4y ago
    TFA starts out with a straw man, suggesting that there's no value in a $15 food safety course because what it teaches is trivial and obvious - like what a moldy strawberry looks like. The conclusion which they are suggesting is that this $15 is a fig leaf for funding an organization not in the employees' interest. In fact, the course teaches many things that are not common knowledge and which are important for food preparation - specifically the times and temperatures at which food must be kept in order to minimize the culture of dangerous bacteria. Maybe the Times would prefer that food workers be taught this important information about food safety by some other organization but trivializing the actual information is a bad faith argument.
- pydry 4y ago
  It is about funding the organization that is a lobby group dedicated to pinning wages down. That is literally the issue.
warning26 4y ago
What we really need to do to fix this is abolish tipping, but sadly most restaurant workers have some kind of tipping Stockholm syndrome. “If I do well I’ll get lots of tips!” No you won’t. Studies have shown that people tend to tip the same regardless of service. It’s a hidden fee, nothing more.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Tons of servers/waiters make WAY more with tips than they would in any other job they could get. It's not Stockholm syndrome for them.
- pgwhalen 4y ago
  In America, my experience is that tippers don’t like tipping, but tippees do. It’s not the variability and incentive that makes tippees like it, it’s just the extra money. It may be a hidden fee, but it results in them making more overall.
balderdash 4y ago
Restaurants are pretty low margin businesses unless you are a large corporate chain, and even then they are not very high margin which means that wage increases have huge effects on profitability. For example, Darden restaurant group operates with a gross margin of ~20% (with labor being ~36% of cogs), and SG&A is 5% of sales, for a ~15% EBITDA margin. So every 10% increase in wage costs decreases GM ~3.6% and reduces EBITDA by 25% (15% to 11.4%) This means in order to raise wages restaurants need to either cut costs (automation, reducing # of jobs), reduce tip expectations (20% to 15%, negating wage increases), increase prices (and reduce demand, leading to a lower # of jobs and hurting shareholder value), or be good with a massive shareholder value destruction. My point is that big picture, framing this in any other light than a this is either a transfer from shareholders to employees, or to pay less employees more at the expense of making some employees redundant is disingenuous.
xkcd1963 4y ago
Don't pay tips. The employer should pay normal wages.

77 points by CaptainZapp 4y ago

haspoken 4y ago

https://archive.is/wmNNt https://archive.is/wmNNt

Overtonwindow 4y ago

TL;DR: trade association

roenxi 4y ago

The framing here annoys me on a lot of levels: 1) There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn't how wages work - that isn't how the price of most other things a business expenses is decided. 2) There is a frame that a "living wage" is some magic number. I remember "fight for $15" being a slogan somewhere. Which, given how long the fight takes, has probably become a Fight for $10 after inflation by now. The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them. Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be. Market inefficiencies usually make life worse for people with no money.

justin66 4y ago
> There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn't how wages work There are literally exceptions built into minimum wage law for tipped workers like restaurant workers.
- bitcurious 4y ago
  >There are literally exceptions built into minimum wage law for tipped workers like restaurant workers. From when I was a waiter and had a weirdly slow week - it's not so much an exception as a change to how 'wage' is defined. Your total hourly income needs to be the minimum wage. If your tips+floor_wage>= minimum_wage, exception is in effect. If your tips+floor_wage< minimum_wage, floor_wage is increased until they are equal.
  - jimkleiber 4y ago
    I've often wondered, yes, that's the law, but do most restaurants actually do that?
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      They must by law, but what will likely happen is that if you complain, they'll do it the once and then fire you, since by their metrics you are performing poorly by not getting enough tips to even cover minimum wage.
closewith 4y ago
> Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. That's an assertion, not an axiom. It seems to work in the favour of low-paid employees in other developed counties.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  The unintended consequence is super high youth unemployment across a lot of Europe. Youth unemployment, meaning people from working age to about 25, is ~8% in the US, ~19% in France, 38% in Spain, 23% in Italy, 11% in Austria (not terrible), and only Germany and the Netherlands have lower rates than the US by 1-2%.
flerchin 4y ago
Have some empathy with servers that are literally paid $0 in their paychecks. Compare the state of things for servers in NY vs servers in CA and realize that your arguments do not hold up. The de facto $0 wage that servers are paid is a crime. It should end.
- digerata 4y ago
  https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped I'm not sure what "de facto $0 wage" means.
  - flerchin 4y ago
    Their paychecks are $0. The entire check goes to the government.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Every server I know makes over $20/hr in tips minimum. Double that on a busy weekend. And they don't pay tax on it, so its really more like $25/hr minimum.
      - flerchin 4y ago
        When it's slow, and their boss keeps them doing busy-work on penalty of losing their job, how much do they make? $0.
        dahfizz 4y ago
        That would be illegal.
        alocasia-1 4y ago
        You're not wrong, but generally speaking, trying to get your employer to make up the difference (as they are legally required to) is a good way to get fired.
pessimizer 4y ago
> The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them. Low pay and awkward, inconsiderate scheduling are not mysterious things that need to be explained.
- roenxi 4y ago
  How to make pay go up is quite mysterious though, people seem to struggle with that. China has seen living standards double and double and double again because they worked hard and invested in capital. India too. Africa following the same path. I keep an eye on per-capita energy stats which suggest the average person living in China is locking in to a better living standard than the average person living in the UK. Seems likely that restaurant workers will be worse payed by the time I'm old. I fully acknowledge that it is easier to get a doubling in living standards in China than the US. But the strategies they are using are wildly different and most of the things China they are doing to achieve amazing outcomes have been made illegal in the US. Indeed, one of the strategies a lot of countries have used to get ahead is ... allow people to hire workers at low wages and keep local costs low enough that their people can save money. This has moved a lot of wealth from the West to other places. Indeed, stories of big lifestyle improvements from a minimum wage are practically non-existent. Big wins come from owning capital, saving hard, education and upskilling where success stories are common. The framing in this article isn't pushing people to think in those terms, it is pushing them to pick a fight with their employer. That is a strategy for people who are about to lose at economics. For example if restaurant workers want sustainable improvements they should be lobbying for mechanisms to get part-ownership of the business or educational bonuses - both of which are easier fights to win and would lead to better long term outcomes than raw wage increases.
  - bigthymer 4y ago
    What other strategies have other countries used?
    - 4y ago
tarotuser 4y ago
> 1) There is a frame that wages are decided by the government. There is a lot of evidence that this isn't how wages work - that isn't how the price of most other things a business expenses is decided. That's exactly what minimum wage IS. And the other symbol that companies that pay minimum wage are also saying is "If I could pay you less, I would" > 2) There is a frame that a "living wage" is some magic number. I remember "fight for $15" being a slogan somewhere. Which, given how long the fight takes, has probably become a Fight for $10 after inflation by now. "Fight for 15$" has been going on since 2008. It really now should be "Fight for $25" But back when FDR did it, the minimum wage WAS the living wage. But it definitely should be pegged to a random subset of a wide variety of goods, or accept that not everyone in the country needs to work... But that second assertion likely wont happen in my lifetime in the USA. > The best thing that cooks, waiters and bartenders could have happen is some political leadership that stops picking stupid battles and takes a bit of time to articulate what the actual problems are and put some effort towards fixing them. Like, say, Unions? Again, without real teeth in the union laws with NLRB, corporations will just do illegal activities and pay the token fines, and get their way. You may not be able to fire a unionizer, but you can shut the store down for 3 months, lay everyone off, and rehire, flushing the union out. And completely legal. And the fines are laughable, like "you must rehire". > Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be. Market inefficiencies usually make life worse for people with no money. From a terrible libertarian take, that isn't indicative in most of the world (or even European sensibilities), this is laughably wrong. I've seen "trickle down". The only trickle I got was being peed on. And "market inefficiencies" don't care for things like, say, people, human suffering, climate change, or any of those externalities. Those are just inconvenient things to avoid to the "market".
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > "Fight for 15$" has been going on since 2008. It really now should be "Fight for $25" Exactly. This is also what pisses me off regarding reporting on strikes and wage negotiations. If you're going to report on these accurately, any raise less than the rate of inflation should be called a pay cut. The fact that some workers have to strike to get even a 2% pay increase in an 8% inflation environment is nuts.
pjmlp 4y ago
Not in US, in plenty of "communist" European countries it is. No need for tipping at every opportunity.
- tapland 4y ago
  You mean unions?
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    No, laws for minimum wages across specific industries. Naturally unions leverage on top of those laws.
    - rcme 4y ago
      It's really not about minimum wage. Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until 2014. Ultimately, it's about having a social safety net. As a worker, if you have a social safety net, then you can afford to form a union without worrying about the health and security of your family. Also, higher taxes disincentives such reckless profit seeking.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Did I say every European country has it? Yeah it is sad that for all the progress on this country, it still lags behind on some safety nets in regards to poorer countries. I never understood the need to tip toilet workers instead of providing them a proper salary.
        rcme 4y ago
        No, you didn't say every European country has it, but many European countries don't have a minimum wage. Denmark, where McDonalds workers famously earn $22 an hour, does not have a minimum wage either. So clearly a legally defined minimum wage doesn't really matter in terms of average salary.
stefan_ 4y ago
I don't think you understood the article, at all. > National Restaurant Association This is not an association in the business of lobbying for cooks, waiters and bartenders. It is in fact in the business of making sure labor stays cheap. It is obviously not an association that should somehow be entrusted with mandatory safety training regulation; that is just corrupt regulatory capture.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Are you trying to say that Herman Cain wasn't a famous union leader?
vimacs2 4y ago
Your perspective seems to be completely orthogonal to reality. 1. That is actually how "wages work". The state decides what is the minimal possible wage and then businesses will pay that amount to low status workers because businesses seek to maximize the surplus value out of their workers. Suggesting that businesses will opt into paying their workers a living wage without an external pressure is laughable and ahistoric. 2. Nobody serious is suggesting that $15 is some magical number but given political reality, it seems like an easier sell than proposing a minimum salary that dynamically adjusts based on local cost of living and inflation. It would also be a massive increase relative to the abysmal figure it is today. "There is a very real chance that the more of those battles they win, the worse the outcome will be." Such as the battle for minimum wage, the weekend, the 40 hour work week or the abolition of child labor? I'm waiting for a credible example of a pro worker regulation having overall negative consequences for workers.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  The minimum wage is $0. If the law makes it illegal to hire workers at a price below the productivity they provide, they will not be hired.
  - vimacs2 4y ago
    That's a common piece of libertarian propaganda but what happens in reality is businesses are forced to offer decent wages to attract labor and the ones that don't, perish - as they should.
- roenxi 4y ago
  > Such as the battle for minimum wage, the weekend, the 40 hour work week or the abolition of child labor? https://www.bls.gov/IAG/TGS/iag70.htm https://www.bls.gov/IAG/TGS/iag70.htm tells me that the average hospitality worker is working 25 hours a week. Did we have another huge fight to bring the 40 hour work week down to 25 hours? I suspect not, or people would talk about that instead of the 40 hour week. That victory looks a bit hollow - much like any successes in pitching a minimum wage of low single digit dollars per hour which has been rubbed out by inflation. Even the child labour one is interesting - children are unemployable regardless of the law, they don't have the skill, stamina or strength to participate meaningfully in a modern economy. It makes a difference, but this is a ban on something that doesn't make much economic sense to start with. This isn't a meaningful political question these days, the economy has no use for children. Child labour went the way of slavery - any society attempting to utilise it will get steamrollered by capitalists using productive techniques to do an order of magnitude better.
talideon 4y ago
Why should there be two minimum wages in the US? That's the most basic issue here.
grecy 4y ago
> Greater government control over wages and prices is not going to help low status workers people. It has done precisely that in every developed country except the one with the most poverty, and an entirely unique class of people called the working class poor. Why doesn’t that class of people exist in any other developed country? Because of government control of wages.
Consultant32452 4y ago
If you generally say that laws are written by lobbyists for the benefit of the group(s) that are in power at the expense of the powerless, no one bats an eye. But as soon as you start applying that to sacred cows like minimum wage, people fall into immediate cognitive dissonance.

korroziya 4y ago

So tired of this myth. Restaurant-workers/servers/bartenders make $2.15/hr plus tips. If that amount < minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. If they don't, they're breaking the law and any server with two brain cells to rub together can and should report them. Unless you're a really crappy server, you make more than minimum wage. Most bartenders make well more than minimum wage. If you want to change the TIPPING industry, that's a horse of a different color.

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
Commies love to talk about all these long-debunked straw men, like "trickle down economics" or the idea that economics isn't real because it assumes people are "rational."
foepys 4y ago
Is minimum wage enough to live, though?
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  Does it have to be?
tarotuser 4y ago
> Restaurant-workers/servers/bartenders make $2.15/hr plus tips. If that amount < minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference. If they don't, they're breaking the law and any server with two brain cells to rub together can and shoukd report them. > Unless you're a really crappy server, you make more than minimum wage. Most bartenders make well more than minimum wage. Well, restaurant work is rife with tax fraud and misclassification of tips everywhere. So yeah, the servers get paid $2.15/hr and hope that tips covers it the rest of the way. Then again, ive seen sleazy shit, like "averaging out over 2 weeks" to make $7.35/hr, rather than the fact the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday they got a wage equal to $5.00/hr. Or restaurant managers will also demand servers do cleaning and other duties... which would be under $7.35/hr . How do you account for this time if the company/manager is cheating in this way? (Ive never seen a restaurant job switch the person's labor classification to do this.) That's right, you file a grievance with the Dept of Labor. I've been there, and done that. If you want a lawyer, you'll likely be denied since you make peanuts, so the case will be for peanuts. But when the DoL responds, like usually months later, it's likely a moot point. You MIGHT, at the end of a yearlong investigation, MIGHT get paid back for the time. Then again, maybe not. The company can afford lawyers. You cannot, getting paid $2.35/hr

pydry 4y ago

https://www.bustle.com/articles/32519-terrible-san-francisco-badideaca-billboard-tells-workers-ipads-can-replace-them https://www.bustle.com/articles/32519-terrible-san-francisco... This how the national restaurant association tried to lobby against a reduction in restaurant profits in California 10 years ago. They really are a terrible organization.

mhb 4y ago

This is pretty disingenuous: "That course is basic, with lessons like “bathe daily” and “strawberries aren’t supposed to be white and fuzzy, that’s mold.” " Part of the course includes time and temperature safety requirements which I don't think are obvious or intuitive to most people who are being employed as food handlers. Who should pay the $15 for the training is another issue. From: https://www.servsafe.com/access/SS/Catalog/ProductDetail/SSECT6 https://www.servsafe.com/access/SS/Catalog/ProductDetail/SSE... Covers five key areas: Basic Food Safety Personal Hygiene Cross-Contamination & Allergens Time and Temperature Cleaning and Sanitation

pessimizer 4y ago
This list is not evidence that the course is not basic. The word "basic" is the first word on the list.
- mhb 4y ago
  TFA starts out with a straw man, suggesting that there's no value in a $15 food safety course because what it teaches is trivial and obvious - like what a moldy strawberry looks like. The conclusion which they are suggesting is that this $15 is a fig leaf for funding an organization not in the employees' interest. In fact, the course teaches many things that are not common knowledge and which are important for food preparation - specifically the times and temperatures at which food must be kept in order to minimize the culture of dangerous bacteria. Maybe the Times would prefer that food workers be taught this important information about food safety by some other organization but trivializing the actual information is a bad faith argument.
pydry 4y ago
It is about funding the organization that is a lobby group dedicated to pinning wages down. That is literally the issue.

warning26 4y ago

What we really need to do to fix this is abolish tipping, but sadly most restaurant workers have some kind of tipping Stockholm syndrome. “If I do well I’ll get lots of tips!” No you won’t. Studies have shown that people tend to tip the same regardless of service. It’s a hidden fee, nothing more.

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
Tons of servers/waiters make WAY more with tips than they would in any other job they could get. It's not Stockholm syndrome for them.
pgwhalen 4y ago
In America, my experience is that tippers don’t like tipping, but tippees do. It’s not the variability and incentive that makes tippees like it, it’s just the extra money. It may be a hidden fee, but it results in them making more overall.

balderdash 4y ago

Restaurants are pretty low margin businesses unless you are a large corporate chain, and even then they are not very high margin which means that wage increases have huge effects on profitability. For example, Darden restaurant group operates with a gross margin of ~20% (with labor being ~36% of cogs), and SG&A is 5% of sales, for a ~15% EBITDA margin. So every 10% increase in wage costs decreases GM ~3.6% and reduces EBITDA by 25% (15% to 11.4%) This means in order to raise wages restaurants need to either cut costs (automation, reducing # of jobs), reduce tip expectations (20% to 15%, negating wage increases), increase prices (and reduce demand, leading to a lower # of jobs and hurting shareholder value), or be good with a massive shareholder value destruction. My point is that big picture, framing this in any other light than a this is either a transfer from shareholders to employees, or to pay less employees more at the expense of making some employees redundant is disingenuous.

xkcd1963 4y ago

Don't pay tips. The employer should pay normal wages.