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Pay your employees a living wage (media.piefed.zip)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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Pay your employees a living wage
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[–] 42 points 4 months ago (59 children)

That'll show those service workers for working in the US.

Don't get me wrong I fucking hate tipping culture so much and am eternally grateful that I don't live in the US but who are you really punishing here?

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  • [+] 56 points 4 months ago (17 children)
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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    If you want people to strike then support them, misleading them into thinking you’re going to be paying them for their time and labor (tipping is expected in the US, which is why in many states it’s legal to pay servers barely more than $2/hour) is just a dick move. Or just be upfront with them and tell them you’re not going to be tipping and get served accordingly. Or go to a place where non-tipped workers are employed. There are a lot of options that aren’t ‘shit on someone working for $2/hour and tell them it’s for their own good’.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    I begrudgingly tip, but usually 10-15%, like it used to be. I don't buy into the current bullshit narrative of driving up the expected percentages, especially as prices rise as it is. Some might say I'm still an asshole for NoT pAyInG tHeM eNoUgH, but so be it.

    So many tipped workers fight to keep being abused in this way, and I don't reward that, even if I support these post-slavery practices through cultural guilt alone.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    As soon as the “no tax on tips” passed my baseline tip dropped 5%.

    What about the cooks? Hostess? Other back of house staff?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    They generally get a portion of the tips. It varies from place to place, but when I was serving it was about 3% of total sales, regardless of tip percentage. If you did $1000 in sales, $30 of your tips went to BOH and support staff, whether you made $100 or $300.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Asking from a place of genuinely not knowing; are there a reasonable number of places where non-tipped workers are employed in this sort of sector? If so, it might be really handy to put together a list, so people can more easily make the choice to go there, rather than stiffing staff who need the tips to survive.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Generally no fast food workers are tipped, it’s restaurant/bar only. And restaurants that don’t allow tips will generally advertise it. Off the top of my head I don’t know of any chains that don’t do tipping, but I also don’t eat out much.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    Yea, the thing I don't get about the "if I don't tip the workers will unionize" crowd is that they can just not go to tipping establishments or just eat takeout. You don't have to basically steal labor from the workers. If you think "them making less money is better for the market" then just don't make them work for you and refuse to pay what is expected. Boycotting tipping establishments would help, but that doesn't get people free/less expensive stuff so they don't do that.

    Even if I take them in the best faith possible, they're just exploiting the workers themselves and blaming the workers for their exploitation. In that situation they basically take the place of the bosses saying "if you want a raise go work somewhere else".

    I also hate tipping culture, but it's so rude to go to another country (during a rise in fascism no less!) and act like by not following their norms you're having any effect on the culture other than making yourself look like bad.

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  • [–] 29 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Workers in Europe weren't handed the rights they have, in some cases people literally died fighting for them. The only tip I have for American service workers is "unionize".

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago*

    You think American workers haven't suffered and died fighting for their rights? I know this information is not exactly front and center in history books for reasons of shame and intentional obfuscation, but American worker rights history is stained in blood just as yours is.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Lmao you think we were handed this? We've been fighting for our rights to unionize for literally decades on end. Our government works with companies to literally kill us if we don't go back to work. Men women and children have died fighting for the rights we DO have.

    Fuck off with this "you're only getting this because you aren't trying hard enough to unionize" bullshit. Our rights have been bled for by hundreds of thousands over the years.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Our rights have been bled for by hundreds of thousands over the years.

    Exactly, so honour the people that paid for your rights with their blood, and fight your exploiter instead of picking fights with other workers.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    If the servers don't get tips anymore, they might simply strike for a living wage. The current system just makes servers even more dependent with every single tip that replaces what should be a wage. Somethings gotta give, it's not the workers, and the bosses wont budge without pressure, so even if it's hard, it might be the only way something really changes for the better.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    They aren't going to strike from this event. Wait staff don't have insurance or savings. Restaurant owners can't afford to pay living wages with benefits; the margins are razor-thin as-is.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Have you never heard of strike funds? If service workers can't even pay rent they're going to strike and walk out, breeding a crisis that will make tipping culture untenable.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (13 children)

    The problem is the workers who get tips generally like it because they can potentially make a lot more than a comparable fixed wage. On a good night you can make several times over the base wage, and under-report cash tips on your taxes (or omit them entirely, but the IRS might catch that).

    So a lot of workers don't want tipping to go away any more than the restaurant owners do.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    Then they also have to deal with people who see through the shenanigans and refuse to tip. Fuck em.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    But base wage for those positions is also significantly lower than minimum wage because the tips are expected to compensate for it, so the ceiling is higher but the floor is also lower. So refusing to tip at all does kind of make you out to be the asshole.

    Unfortunately most people are just trying to survive and don't really have the time or the energy to worry about the bigger picture.

    Personally, I just split the difference and refuse to tip anywhere it's not already factored into the wage structure. It's not gonna change the situation but at least it helps hold the line.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Unionise and change the situation, or lose. I'm not paying money I can't spare because people refuse to help themselves. I repeat, fuck em.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Living in the UK, I easily avoid giving any such slave driver my money.

    I'm simply explaining why the rest of the world isn't like the US, workers collectively fought for rights, simple as that. Either get on with changing it, or keep complaining about being stiffed (while pocketing off the books income in a lot of cases). Shrug

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Collective action against tipping isn't individual action against tipping tbf. Just needs yanks to build on this and push further to break down this shitty culture that only holds because consumers accept it.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    That would also require being unfortunate enough to be in the US for a protracted length of time.

    While the UK is indeed a shit hole and getting worse thanks to Trump wannabes and other associated scumbags only a hair's breadth from being out and out Nazis, it isn't quite as bad as the US. Yet.

    Edit: I have spent time in the states, but it's direction in the last decade has put paid to me ever returning, for business or pleasure. Fuck that.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I live in Canada, not the US. We have tipping here as well, but we don’t pay restaurant servers $2/hr. They get the same minimum wage that everyone else gets. We still have tons of World Cup tourists refusing to tip and creating a big conflict.

    I think some restaurants are moving to automatic 20% surcharges on the bill as a way of dealing with non-tippers.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Let's say all customers just stop tipping, then the workers will be forced to find another job if the restaurants don't start paying a living wage?

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Because they're definitely in a job they need tips to survive in due to the availability of other jobs that don't.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Yep the the American job market is fucked, and it will be painful to change it especially when the people in charge are paid by the oligarchs.

    One less painful way of moving away from tipping culture would be something like this: gradually increasing the base salary for workers, as I recall the minimum wage is below $3 for tipped staff. And then gradually decreasing the maximum allowed tip.

    But the problem is: Show me a single state where the politicians would agree and then have the balls to go through with it while the oligarchs and supreme court will do everything in their power to keep the status quo.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The restaurant will be forced to start paying a living wage or it won't have any waitstaff left.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    Restaurants usually take the latter option. I’ve been to plenty of places that are down to the owner cooking and his wife serving, no hired staff at all.

    Restaurants are never gonna pay more to the staff than they collect for meals sold. Most of the restaurant’s income (if they aren’t a fancy place that sells a lot of alcohol) goes toward paying for food, rent, and utilities.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Seriously. This is literally the kind of thing y'all call us "entitled" for.

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  • [+] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)
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