Posted on 07/20/2019 7:07:56 PM PDT by EdnaMode
[snip]
For workers regularly making more than $30 a month in tips, employers can currently pay as little as $2.13 an hour. That subminimum wage has been frozen at this level for decades. Should the Raise the Wage Act pass the House, it will mark the first time that either chamber of Congress has moved to eliminate the subminimum wage, which not only deepens economic inequalities but also happens to be a relic of slavery.
You might not think of tipping as a legacy of slavery, but it has a far more racialized history than most Americans realize. Tipping originated in feudal Europe and was imported back to the United States by American travelers eager to seem sophisticated. The practice spread throughout the country after the Civil War as U.S. employers, largely in the hospitality sector, looked for ways to avoid paying formerly enslaved workers.
One of the most notorious examples comes from the Pullman Company, which hired newly freed African American men as porters. Rather than paying them a real wage, Pullman provided the black porters with just a meager pittance, forcing them to rely on tips from their white clientele for most of their pay.
Tipping further entrenched a unique and often racialized class structure in service jobs, in which workers must please both customer and employer to earn anything at all. A journalist quoted in Kerry Segrave’s 2009 book, Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities, wrote in 1902 that he was embarrassed to offer a tip to a white man. “Negroes take tips, of course; one expects that of them—it is a token of their inferiority,” he wrote. “Tips go with servility, and no man who is a voter in this country is in the least justified in being in service.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
This, again?
I will no longer tip people of color so not to insult them.
I can tell you this , except for a very precious few , black folks today DO NOT tip . Even though they are clearly well off and more than able to travel in style . Many are also coldly surly , in addition to not tipping . It’s ery curious....
Lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, professors, entertainers, doctors. Most professionals have to satisfy both their employers and their customers/patients/audience/clientele.
I don’t want a be a racist, so I guess that I better not tip black waiters anymore.
As it is, I no longer tip in places with a ‘living wage’ (i.e., a wage at or near $15/hour), since the tip is already built into the price. It took a bit getting used to, but now I don’t even give it a second thought.
By the way, in Asia they don’t even have a tip line on charge slips. In those cultures, good service is simply EXPECTED as part of the job. We could learn something from them, particularly with our ‘living wages’.
Some people make good money on tips. Not sure they would be happy to be forced into a one-size-fits-all wage structure.
Not sure about those who steal tips.
Yep. The sub-minimum wage earner will be able to say:
I'll be making $15/hour...if I could only find a job.
Is this why black people are notoriously bad tippers?
Before: You stiffed, and you were a chintsy, ghetto a-hole
After: You stiff, and you’re a dignified egalitarian
What does that make salespeople who get draws against commissions? In other words they get a draw but that draw reduces their commissions they do earn. So inreality they strictly get commissions. If they are good they get paid very well, if not they soon find themselves looking for another profession.
If both parties agreed to an arrangement, then it’s no one else’s business. If either party doesn’t like the arrangement, then it ends as mutually agreed.
I don’t get what is so hard to understand about this.
The government shouldn’t be regulating these agreements beyond the enforcement of legal contracts.
If a waitress is willing to work for five cents an hours, then she should be allowed to work for five cents an hour.
I heard a rumor that shadowing urban shoplifting suspects inside stores strongly lowers the rate of climate change.
“Tipping further entrenched workers must please both customer and employer to earn anything at all”
https://webmail.lerctr.org/~transit/healy/Uh_Yeah.mp3
I wonder why servers don’t like urban customers..?
I wonder why they often have to wait longer to be seated..?
Should've saved this article for next week.
TIP= To Insure Promptness
TRUE. But more to the point, it’s PLAINLY FALSE if you are a GOOD/GREAT server. = I was a server at a nice/old-school Supper Club, when I was in college in “The Dark Ages”.
(I did “quite well, thank you very much” on <1.ooUSD per hour because I took great care to be polite/helpful/attentive/kind to my customers.)
Many a week, I took home over 100.oo per shift, when lots of adults, working full-time at a salaried position, were not “clearing” 100.oo per week.
Later, when I was a partner in THE CAROUSEL, I knew that any number of our waitresses made more net profit each week than I did. = 250.oo in cash per night was commonplace for our waitresses.
(I remember one of our YL, who came to me one afternoon telling me that she had made “almost nothing” the night before & I told here, “Try a happy smile on your face & be more attentive to the customers. The money will come your way. - Watch LEAH, as she nearly always does well.”- She did watch/”copy” Leah & received a THOUSAND DOLLAR tip from a wealthy physician that same week.)
Yours, TMN78247
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.