not too mention the CA minimum wage is $16 for tipped employees. wouldn’t it behove those that are against this initiative to explain why CA passed an even more aggressive bill and the sky did not fall? we have an actual real world example of this change and it didn’t impact the industry in any of the more extreme ways the doomsayers have written.
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Do you have evidence to support this?
Not doubting you (and not being snarky at all) but I would genuinely like to see the empirical evidence behind that statement.
I remember reading the regular tipping threads on Chowhound. How much should I tip in Situation X and how much in Situation Y. As an outside observer, I’m convinced that you are right that it’s a very ingrained cultural thing within American society and unlikely to significantly shift, except in the long term. I find it very alien and don’t pretend to understand it - it’s just one of things that contribute to my view that the States is the most “foreign” country I have visited, in spite of us sharing a language.
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I should revise my statement to be more rhetorical. As someone who travels somewhat regularly to western Europe, I quickly acclimated to no-tipping economy, rounding up when appropriate.
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I’m going to have to disagree with you here. Look, I did great on my math GREs and went to an Ivy League Grad school. But in a dark, noisy restaurant at the end of a meal, when trying to sort a check out 3 or 4 ways, to say it’s trivial to get a group to agree on or even understand the discrepancies involved in this quibble is just not my experience. Everyone I know breathes a sigh of relief and uses the “20%” printed on the bottom.
If I recall correctly, the official literature from the state pointed to lack of evidence from other states who’ve changed tipping laws as one reason to come out “against” as the official recommendation of the state committee. It read to me that the people writing the intitiative (who are they, by the way?) didn’t present enough background info or supporting evidence to convince the committee.
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I THINK (??) the California law just went into effect a few months ago, so I would guess there is little to no real resulting data available at this point either way . . . .
Edit - I think I have this wrong - looks like CA changed the tipping/minimum wage a while ago (maybe 2001) and a new minimum wage for “fast casual/fast food” restaurants just went into effect a few months ago . . . . If that is right, and CA changed things back in 2001 . . . things must be fine with the new rules . . . but don’t hold me to this, harder to find online than you’d think . … .
The big anti campaign in Pittsfield Mass is spearheaded by owners of restaurants with liquor licenses and are threatening that your favorite bartender will quit. They are also saying tips must be pooled but the actual question says they could be pooled not must. This is the same group that complained about COVID restrictions and homeless people downtown.
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" . . . shouldn’t really be a problem."
not for old people - who learned fractions and decimal in grade school.
the new age children struggle to make change if the register doesn’t tell them.
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evidence:
Articles
California Loses Nearly 10,000 Fast-Food Jobs After $20 Minimum Wage Signed Last Fall
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I am asking . . . not trying to argue all this - my opinions are posted above but open to new info . . .
It seems we are conflating points and arguments. . . . . wages, tipping . . . business owners, employees . . it’s complicated.
In CA, it seems (again it’s hard to figure out exact timelines) that CA already required business to pay food service employees minimum wage ($16/hr), any tips received were above and beyond that and could not be shared/pooled/etc with exempt employees (aka managers) or owners. I can’t find anything that says the “sky fell” when that happened.
The loss of fast good jobs referenced above is being blamed on a new CA law that says fast food workers (who are not tipped employees in general anyway, so no longer a tipping situation) need to be paid $20/hr, higher than the statewide minimum wage of $16/hr. (This is a weird law with some strange carve outs - I can’t explain it all). It is interesting that most of the job loss happened well before the law went into effect (April 2024) - or so it seems.
This job loss seems to be because of bottom line costs for the owners, not because employees were leaving jobs because they made less money. So while the industry lost jobs, it doesn’t appear that “people” lost jobs (i.e. weren’t able to find other work). That isn’t a subtle difference in this argument IMHO - but also a difficult one to really parse out.
It’s complicated . . . . and pretty fuzzy since different sources change the framing and variables - maybe it’s worth considering all those angles, but it makes it hard to simplify the ballot question. . . .
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That’s the minimum wage law for fast food workers, which are not tipped restaurant employees.
I posted about this and the effects of CA minimum wage law for fast food workers earlier (excerpted below), which I do not believe has any relevance to this ballot measure in MA. Actually, I know it has no relevance.
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If people are too stupid and lose money thereby, than it is their own fault and can’t be blamed on restaurants
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We need stupid people.
It’s how we make money.
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the whole thing is really rather simple.
yes - tipped employees and minimum wage workers are separate issues.
btw, the definition of ‘tipped employee’ is much more extensive than “waitstaff”
labor costs are part of running/operating a business.
when labor costs are dramatically increased, the business has to charge more for their services. there is no free lunch.
businesses that do not make enough “profit” simply collapse. when the freezer dies, they can’t put a cup out for a “Go Fund My Freezer” - they have to have the money from “profit” to cover those costs.
for tipped employees, the business pays them the tip credit wage or, as in CA the minimum wage. so if the minimum state wage goes from $7/hr to $16/hr,
a tipped employee who worked 40 hrs in a week would get from their employer:
old: $7 * 40 = $280 + tips
new: $16 * 40 = $640 + (the same?) tips
also realize, the increased labor cost is not just 16-7= $9/hr * 40 = $360, the employer must pay various taxes and fees that are based on pay.
Federal:
social security
medical
unemployment
local & state:
workman’s compensation
city payroll tax
state unemployment
those additional taxes&fees amount to ~12.5% of employee’s pay - varies by location.
so the $640 increase actually costs the employer 1.125 * $640 = $720 per week.
It is unknown, but I think there are examples that might shed light on the subject.
As we all know, there are many versions of minimum wage, as well as how tipped workers are treated across the US, California’s and Massachusett’s versions being among them.
ETA @Harters it is intriguing to me to think that “all European countries” might approach anything the same way!
I learn a lot here!
I wonder if this is the customer whose impact folks are worried about.
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You’ll find that I actually posted “all European countries I know”.
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my home state still uses the Federal tip-wage-credit. so I continue to tip 15-20%.
in CA and others where waitstaff is already at absolute minimum non-tipped wages - no, my tip is limited to max 10% and that only if they did a commendable job.
I have no reason to believe waitstaff must be making six-seven figure incomes to be a livable wage.
I meant most recent HS graduates I know are not frequenting, or at least not footing the bill at places where a lot of income comes from tips.
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well, that goes to “the sky is falling” comment.
overall inflation, and ‘dining inflation’ has resulted - per many many web-news articles - in people eating in more, eating out less.
fixed costs, fewer customers = yet higher prices, or go bust.
rather a simple batch of concepts.
Hi @digga, thanks for bringing this up. I’ve been learning from this thread about the situation here in Massachusetts.
I see this as a likely pay cut for servers because diners either won’t tip or won’t tip as much. Importantly, under this proposal management would be allowed to pool and distribute service employees’ tips so they wouldn’t get to keep all of what they’ve earned.
Here’s a link to an opinion piece from The Boston Globe written by a service professional who works in our state. I found the following paragraph to be useful:
“The thing that bothers me the most about the ballot measure is that it’s not an organic, grass-roots movement of bartenders, servers, and other tipped employees. Instead, it’s being pushed by an outside political activist group that wants to tell us how we should be paid. I have yet to speak to a tipped employee who has heard from the group or who supports its ballot proposal.”
So, I’m very carefully considering this ballot question because I want my local restaurants and servers to stick around.
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