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Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#141

Post by peteretep »

BeetleB wrote: post #134
maxerickson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC press release reads like they stated a wage+all the tips and then didn't disclose that they were getting a lower wage+all the tips. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/02/amazo... In a typical restaurant job, the stated wage is the legal minimum for a tipped role, and then (in theory anyway), the restaurant is required to ensure that the employee receives the normal minimum wage if they don't…

I don't disagree about the "saying one thing and doing something else" part. I was commenting on the general principle of lowering one's wages (even to below minimum wages) if the person gets enough tips, and how common that is.

I hear you, I'm not sure how useful this is as a comparison though; plenty of things are fine and dandy if you're upfront that you're doing it and gain agreement from the other party, and illegal if you conceal that you're doing and don't get agreement.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#142

Post by akira2501 »

underseacables wrote: post #138

When you think tipping, remember it’s origins in feudal Europe, and American slavery. “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.” https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-b...

I'm not sure that its fair to claim that tipping has origins in American Slavery. In the Pullman case, the workers eventually formed the first major African American union and successfully won better pay from the railroads, in 1918.

There's also Wikipedia's suggestion that tipping as a way to make up for lower wages as a wider practice came about as a result of Prohibitions effect on Hotels and Restaurants. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity#History

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#144

Post by m-ee »

darwinwhy wrote: post #11
peteretep wrote: post #3

> The FTC alleges Amazon changed the way it paid drivers in late 2016, lowering the hourly rate and then used customer tips to make up the difference. Amazon continued to tell drivers they were receiving all of their tips, even after receiving hundreds of complaints from drivers, the agency said. How is this not simply theft? Why does this attract civil charges and not criminal ones?

> when Amazon steals $62 million from its employees it's "misrepresenting drivers' tips", when Amazon employees steal $130,000 of products from Amazon it's a "theft ring" ~ https://twitter.com/CitationsPod/status/1356779651885133825

Wage theft is by far the largest source of theft by dollar amount in America

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#145

Post by chrysoprace »

buzzdenver wrote: post #108
imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

It's been tried in restaurants many times and usually with negative results. People balk at higher prices on the menu.

Then it needs to be mandated at a federal level. All people see is a difference in the advertised prices, while they likely would be paying the same on the final bill.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#146

Post by baby »

decker wrote: post #139
accountofme wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Australia does not have tipping in it's culture. We pay our wait staff fair and reasonable rates (legally mandated btw). I don't really think our food costs are too much higher than the USA. And people eat out ALOT here. Food tastes good, service is good. People want to come back. Please expand your horizons.

Never having a tipping culture is a much different thing than having to transition from one that tips to one that does not. Did Australia have tips then do away with them at some point? If so, how did they pull it off?

France used to have tips, which became a service fee, and is now transparent in the final price.

Interestingly waiters tend to ask Americans for tips in France, while they don’t expect anything from Europeans, that’s because American tourists tip when they travel there.

The solution is to stop tipping.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#147

Post by efwfwef »

imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

I've said it before, the only way to get out of the tipping culture is to stop tipping, and to continue to fight for a raised minimum wage. There's just no way around it, that's how some other countries got out of the tipping culture too. Shaming others who don't tip, and tipping when you go out, just contributes to the problem.

If people understand that tipping is actually less of a thing, then the pressure will be on the employers, not the customers.

I know I'll get downvoted for saying that, because we're still much in a "if you don't tip you're an asshole" culture. But I personally have decided that I will contribute to the solution by not tipping.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#148

Post by ascorbic »

Noos wrote: post #117
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys understand that the price of meals would go up to compensate for the lack of tipping right? You’re not simply removing the cash. That extra 20% or whatever is now baked into the price. And generous tippers can still leave their extra bit. The change is, that by default everyone earns a fair wage.

you know that the actual minimum wage of someone who makes $30 or more in tips a month is $2.13 right? By law, if they don't make enough tips in a week to earn an effective wage of $7.25 an hour, the employer has to pay them that much. this is all the employer actually has to pay. Everything else is the customer. Now imagine the employer has to pay $15 an hour. Thats 6+ times what they pay now if its a decently busy…

So...they put the prices up by 20% or whatever. By definition, the amount they'd raise would be enough to pay the staff the equivalent to the amount lost in tips. They don't need to maintain the same GP margin, as this is pure extra revenue.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#149

Post by boulos »

Noos wrote: post #140
imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

I'm sure famously low margin, high risk places like restaurants can easily raise employee wages anywhere form 2 to 6 fold. As I said downthread, all a restaurant has to pay is $2.13 an hour if they make enough tips to earn an effective wage of over $7.25 an hr in a week. That's $290 a week for 40 hours of work pretax. For a tech comparison look at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It probably is closer to the $2.13 minimum w…

To be clear, in California the tipped minimum wage is at least $13/hr state wide (and $14/hr for businesses with 25 employees or more). I believe in San Francisco, it’s also just strictly the same as minimum wage of $16.07/hr (and again for larger businesses, Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory [Edit: actually, providing coverage is, not Healthy SF, that’s just the cheapest coverage and so very common], and usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute).

So your universe already exists: every restaurant in the state of California already ensures a minimum wage more than 6x the federal minimum.

Re: Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips

#150

Post by melomal »

imgabe wrote: post #9

Just do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.

Each time I order with Glovo I tipped with cash directly to the driver. The 'online' tip has to be one of the dumbest features ever and just stinks of something shady going on.
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