Federal Tipped Minimum Wage of $2.13 is Indentured Servitude?

a reply to: Krakatoa

Actually tipped employees came about during the depression when companies claimed (and maybe rightly) that they literally could not afford to pay for service staff..

After the depression ended. The companies lobbied to keep from changing it back because obviously, their labor cost dropped substantially..

a reply to: Krakatoa

Race card?!?!

lol there are plenty of other races festering in those ghettos too...

originally posted by: JustJohnny
a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Friendly reminder the “family of 4” BS is a nonsense deflection..

I said minimum wage at a full time job will not pay for ONE person... just the one person working 40 hours in a crappy , usually manual laborish job...

The is no argument for allowing companies to pay adults less for a full time week than you can support that one employee on..


In a society that requires money that is indentured servitude.. especially when the companies set wages and lobby to keep down non wage.

The vast majority of minimum wage workers are not supporting families or themselves. Most are teens or young adults. The income from the job is typically play money. In addition, it also isn't the only source of income.

For example, my mother in law worked a few minimum wage jobs. However, my father in law was an investment banker. She just worked to get out of the house, not because "they needed the money".

originally posted by: JustJohnny
a reply to: Krakatoa

Actually tipped employees came about during the depression when companies claimed (and maybe rightly) that they literally could not afford to pay for service staff..

After the depression ended. The companies lobbied to keep from changing it back because obviously, their labor cost dropped substantially..

I never stated why or when, did I genius? I stated the original acronym and purpose. As for the costs, have you EVER run a restaurant? Are you aware that the majority of new restaurants fail in the first 2 years because they simply cannot make enough money to stay afloat? Do you know how much capital you need to borrow to even START a business?

Again, comrade, I suggest you get educated on a topic before you spout off on redistributing other people's money.

I didn't read the whole thread so if this is repeated, and I would think it probably is, then I apologize.

$2.13 is a ridiculous minimum wage. But honestly, how many people who depend on tips actually report their income accurately? The biggest part of their take-home pay is tax-free.

Dbl post.

a reply to: DanDanDat

Tipping is stupid anyway - there should be the consistent high-quality service from all staff and if not delivered, discipline/replace said staff.

Restaurants, hotels, etc. should simply pay an equitable wage like anything else. There's too much negative, entitled energy around the practice that could be done away with.

a reply to: JustJohnny

Who cares why they came about? What matters is today. Today they do NOT want Democrats messing with their tips. They would lose a lot of money.

a reply to: JustJohnny

No one making minimum wage is supporting themselves. It's high school / college kids. Even then most high school students make more than minimum wage.

I see you mentioned indentured servitude ... here's a tip (pun intended), don't quote AOC, you will greatly improve how people perceive you. Look up indentured servitude, then get back to me.

Everyone I know who makes tips is worried a law like this will pass, it would destroy their income. My one friend said she thinks she would lose about half her income.

a reply to: Stroikabot1982

Your not a people person or a business owner I would guess!!

a reply to: DanDanDat

Picture this, a small business, say a small Italian restaurant, has 4 servers, 2 dishwashers, and 2 managers. The managers are owners, so they don't take a salary. The dishwashers get $9 an hour, and the servers make $2.13 an hour plus tips. They average about $75 a night in tips. Everyone seems happy with things. Now, AOC gets her Utopian dream, and minimum wage is now $15 an hour. The owners realize they can't afford that, as $15 an hour to the employee is actually about $21 once you factor in the SS tax and employee paid part. So the restaurant closes. Now 2 men in their 50's lost their dream and money, 6 young people are now looking for work, and won't find something better, save for the dishwashers, and the people in the town now have to go to McDonalds instead of the nice Italian restaurant.

Does this sound like a good thing?

originally posted by: JustJohnny
Actually tipped employees came about during the depression when companies claimed (and maybe rightly) that they literally could not afford to pay for service staff..

After the depression ended. The companies lobbied to keep from changing it back because obviously, their labor cost dropped substantially..

Tipping in the United States came about in the 1840's but really became more prevalent after the Civil War when Americans traveling in Europe brought the custom back.

As to the word's origins that's a whole different matter:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "tip" originated as a slang term and its etymology is unclear. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the meaning "give a small present of money" began around 1600, and the meaning "give a gratuity to" is first attested in 1706. The noun in this sense is from 1755. The term in the sense of "to give a gratuity" first appeared in the 18th century. It derived from an earlier sense of tip, meaning "to give; to hand, pass", which originated in the rogues' cant in the 17th century. This sense may have derived from the 16th-century "tip" meaning "to strike or hit smartly but lightly" (which may have derived from the Low German tippen, "to tap") but this derivation is "very uncertain". The word "tip" was first used as a verb in 1707 in George Farquhar's play The Beaux' Stratagem. Farquhar used the term after it had been "used in criminal circles as a word meant to imply the unnecessary and gratuitous gifting of something somewhat taboo, like a joke, or a sure bet, or illicit money exchanges. Source

originally posted by: Vroomfondel
I didn't read the whole thread so if this is repeated, and I would think it probably is, then I apologize.

$2.13 is a ridiculous minimum wage. But honestly, how many people who depend on tips actually report their income accurately? The biggest part of their take-home pay is tax-free.

It isn't 1960 anymore. The vast majority of payments to tipped employees in the food industry are done via credit cards. You cannot fail to track credit tips.

Cash tips are a very small amount, save for maybe bartenders. And it isn't hard to figure out what the cash tips were, or at least should have been. The IRS has no issue with it. You simply take the cash sales, multiply it times 20%, and that is what the cash tips should have been. If you aren't reporting close to that, you will recieve a bill when audited so that you can pay taxes on that amount (along with penalties).

I don't know anywhere in America a person can live on $85.20 a week. Do you?

If you feel that you are an indentured servant, then get some job skills and find a job that pays better.

The unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in years so now is the time for an upgrade in your job.

The government is never going to create jobs that pay well for the whole country.

originally posted by: tabularosa
I don't know anywhere in America a person can live on $85.20 a week. Do you?

Is there anywhere that they are expected to?

Federal minimum wage law is clear: if your employee (tipped or not) is not making $7.25/hr you have to make up the difference.

The only deductions that do not count towards this are insurance (something the employee purchases) and taxes. Even child support....if the deduction brings you below the federal minimum wage, then the deduction must be reduced to be lawful.

originally posted by: tabularosa
I don't know anywhere in America a person can live on $85.20 a week. Do you?

I know how minimum wage with tips works. Do you? Hint. No one can make $85.20 a week.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan

Is there anywhere that they are expected to?

Federal minimum wage law is clear: if your employee (tipped or not) is not making $7.25/hr you have to make up the difference.

The only deductions that do not count towards this are insurance (something the employee purchases) and taxes. Even child support....if the deduction brings you below the federal minimum wage, then the deduction must be reduced to be lawful.

The interesting part is most tip employees only officially account for about a third of their tips, so even with that is seems they are still over the 7.25 minimum.

There is one word to fix all this anyways... KIOSK!

a reply to: network dude

This is almost exactly the situation at the little Italian restaurant I have been working at for about a month now. There is the owner, the manager (his cousin), 9 kitchen staff, around 7 or 8 servers, 2 bussers, and 2 bartenders. We do a lot of catering so there is other income than the guests who come in to dine in, we also do a lot of Uber Eats and Waitr business along with direct order pick ups and deliveries (after 5pm for delivery).

Sometimes at lunch we don't even make $500 in sales in the dining room and between 2 servers at 20% that's $50 each in gratuities. Generally we do much better than 20% because we have good clientele whom are older, have money, and do not mind tipping for the quality of service we provide. We have a casual upscale atmosphere which lends itself to the residents in our area (upper middle class suburbia) and all of the wait staff is quite happy with the amount of money we make.

I can tell you that our cooks, most of whom have been at the restaurant since it opened 15 years ago, make a good deal more than $15/hr as do the service staff when you take our tips into account.

If the minimum wage were increased to the hypothetical $15/hr, prices would have to increase in order to keep labor costs in line. Menu prices would have to see a commesurate increase and this would result in loss of sales, both dine in and catering/pickup/delivery. The quality of service would also see a drop as servers would not have the incentive to provide the interactions which we do at present.

This would likely kill the business in a short period of time.

Not only would the 20 employees loose their jobs, but the strip center we were in would lose the rent we pay due to the restaurant closing.

However we arrived at the point we are with a tipped wage of $2.13/hr (we make $4.50/hr during lunch due to the lower volume), those of us who make it work and are quite happy with the current arrangement would lose so much more than whatever imagined gains the idiots think would occur should the increased minimum wage be forced upon our industry.

I managed at Chili's for nearly 9 years, and when you figured the hourly rate from my salary, I know for a fact that there were bartenders and servers who were making more per hour than I was with a lot less headache than a manager has. This is why I decided to go back to restaurants as a server than as a manager; equal or greater dollars per hour with so much less stress than that of a manager.

I look at my section as my own sales floor. Tips are based on the total of the check in general, and if I am able to sell appetizers, wine, and dessert on top of the entree, I have increased my dollar per table dramatically and provided my guests with a richer, more enjoyable experience. Increasing the minimum wage takes away any kind of incentive to add such extras to the table's order.

The only servers I ever heard complain about the $2.13/hr when I was a manager were those who were terrible at their job and as a result did not make much in the way of tips and thus Brinker Intl (Chili's parent company) always ended up adding the difference to their check so that these servers got up to minimum wage. I would tell servers all the time that if they weren't averaging at least $15/hr in tips, then perhaps they should think about looking for a different line of work because obviously they did not have the 'service gene' as one GM I work with put it. These servers usually did not last long and ended up at McDonald's or some such place where they got drone pay for drone work.

Being a good server pays well, and in some circumstances can pay very, very well. It's fun, or it should be, and gives people with personalities a chance to showcase them and provide for an enjoyable experience for our guests.

AOC, and anyone else, pushing to get the tipped wage higher than $2.13./hr probably were not good service workers to begin with or never worked in the industry and thus have little to no understanding of the dynamics involved.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

You would get $15/hour, prices would increase to account for the extra $13/hr, and you would get no tips. So you would make less money, and things would cost more. Sounds great ... for socialists who want to control your life and make you dependent on the government.