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Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

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Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#41
If an employer is really intent on stealing their employees' tips, they could just

1. Increase their prices by 15-20% across the board

2. Instruct their waiters to tell all customers that tipping is not required, nor accepted

3. Pay the waiters only 0-10% of the bill, and keep the rest for themselves

If we're relying on leaky laws like these in order to protect the under-privileged, we really need to reconsider our social safety net.

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#42
post #16

And men would lose $1.2B. Why the gendered title? Why not "Waiters would lose $5.8B in earned tips"?

I am wondering if "women" in the title still moves anyone these days? People are joking when they see titles like "10% of homeless are women" as if the remaining 90% were aliens from another planet.

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#43
post #36

I hate tipping culture. When I was young and a waitress in college, I noticed horrible racism from waiters who treated minorities badly due to tipping stereotypes. Please just get rid of it for living wages.

Have you been in countries without tipping culture? Almost all of them have much worse service quality.

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To highlight who the biggest losers are -- the subset of workers that already face wage discrimination would face 80% of the tip loss.

I would be shocked if female waiters in the US are paid less than male ones. Got a source?

I was mainly referring to general wage discrimination across all industries, but here's a few references for the restaurant industry from 10 seconds of googling:

http://rocunited.org/publications/tipped-over-the-edge-gende...

– The industry follows a conscious business model of confining women to the lower-paid positions within restaurants. Women are hired for only 19 percent of chef positions, for example, even though traditionally most women are more likely to do a majority of the cooking at home.

- In addition, women are confined to the lower-paying segments of the industry such as quick-serve and family style rather than the highest-paying fine dining segment. So even within the same job classification of server, full-time, year-round female servers are paid just 68 percent of what male servers are paid ($17,000 vs. $25,000 annually).

http://fortune.com/2015/10/23/wage-gap-restaurants/

- Women and workers of color are often pushed into the lowest-paying jobs in the food service industry, according to a report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a labor advocacy group.

- Women are pushed toward lower-paying jobs at more casual restaurants, and people of color are channeled toward even lower-paying jobs such as bussing and kitchen positions.

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#46
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point -- Tipping is a way to insure excellent service on return visits to service oriented establishments.

So, I assume you never tip when traveling?

Of course I tip when traveling. Not providing a normal tip when accepting a service is breaking the social contract and anti-social.

I do tip more at places I frequent.

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#47
While we are on the subject of tipping does anyone find it slightly annoying that every point of sale system now is configured to ask for an additional tip? Clover, Revel, Square, etc.

Some have different levels of UX where you are basically prompted to give 15%, 20%, 25%. I wonder where the tip actually goes in this case?

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#48
There have been a number of studies that found that attractive people, especially attractive women, receive bigger tips from customers than other groups [1][2] in some contexts. The implications of this are perhaps just as interesting as women being the primary group disadvantaged by this proposed policy simply due to there being a higher proportion of women than men in tip-receiving jobs.

One could argue that if this proposal were to go through, people in tipped industries would receive an allocation of wages that's less tied to subjective consumer tastes about inherent physical attributes that don't directly contribute to the quality of service received. Though I lack polling data on this, I'm hypothesizing most people would perceive that as more fair.

[1] http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487015...

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To highlight who the biggest losers are -- the subset of workers that already face wage discrimination would face 80% of the tip loss.

I would be shocked if female waiters in the US are paid less than male ones. Got a source?

It's more that the majority of tipped workers are women.

Re: Women would lose $4.6B in earned tips if ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized

#50

"DOL has masked the fact that this rule would be a windfall to restaurant owners and other employers—out of the pockets of tipped workers—by making it sound as if this rule is about tip pooling." Sounds like this one must've been written by lobbyists? Assuming this article is accurate, why would this seem like a good rule to get rid of?

Here's an idea -- why don't we let business owners decide how to pay their people? If waiters don't like tip pooling, then they can work for another restaurant that doesn't do it. It's ridiculous that the government even gets involved in this -- assuming minimum wage is met and taxes are being properly paid -- what business is it of the government how restaurants operate (beyond health and safety obviously.) Does the government get involved how a car saleman's commissions are paid? How about the compensation structure of other sales-based professions?
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