Back at the beginning of July, Amanda Monroe of New York, an expecting mother with another son age 3, made a compelling argument about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Monroe lost her job in 2010 as a medical specialist. Since then, the industry has changed, and without a degree, Monroe is no longer able to work in her previous profession. She currently works at McDonald’s earning $8.75 an hour.
By the end of July, reports stated that New York’s low-wage workers had prevailed, and that the minimum wage would be raised to the $15 an hour they were fighting for. This is a major victory for the nationwide campaign to raise the pay of some of the country’s lowest-wage workers.
It was voted unanimously to recommend that wages in the fast-food industry be increased, and the recommendation will go to the state’s acting commissioner of labor. The commissioner is expected to put the recommendations into effect through an order that will bypass state legislature, however if approved, it won’t be fully implemented until 2021.
Now recent reports are indicating that several restaurant owners are considering doing away with tips in an effort to offset the higher cost of labor. While advocates for the raise to $15 say it’s obviously a great way to help the poor and stimulate economic activity, critics claim it will hurt the poor by limiting job opportunities while causing the price of goods to rise.
Owner of New York-based Dirt Candy, made this statement:
“I think that restaurants will have to do this. How else do you compensate for this extra money you’ll have to pay?”
Restaurant owners theorize that by ending tips, they will be able to raise prices without impacting customers too much. In other words, it’s shuffling funds—customers are told not to leave a tip, but the price of the product has gone up to compensate, meaning the tip is basically just included in the price. Some might see this as an insurance that the restaurant owner gets the tip, and not the employee.
On the other hand, getting rid of tips could help close the gap between servers and kitchen staff, who often do not make as much as servers.
“We saw there was a fundamental inequity in our restaurants where the people who worked in the kitchen were paid about half as much as the people who worked with customers in front of the house,” Bob C. Donegan, co-owner of Seattle based Ivar’s seafood restaurants, told The New York Times.
Seattle was the first to pass the $15 minimum wage back in June of 2014, and several other cities followed afterwards. In New York, the increase only applies to fast-food workers (who often don’t earn tips anyway). According to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Seattle restaurants have lost 1,000 jobs since the $15 minimum wage went into effect.
“The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” stated AEI Scholar, Mark J. Perry.
A June report from Moody’s Investors Service argues that the minimum wage doesn’t even have to raise to $15 for negative effects to occur, but ending tips can, in itself, cause additional problems. Tipping has been a part of the American culture for generations, and many people are attracted to the industry because they know they can potentially make good money from tips.
Should the tipping policy be abolished? Tell us your thoughts.
This Article (Living Wage Movement May Bring an End to Tips) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
Sources:
Liss-Schultz, Nina. RH Reality Check. July 24, 2015. (http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/07/24/new-york-fast-food-workers-get-15-minimum-wage/)
Weber, Brandon. UpWorthy. July 2, 2015. (http://www.upworthy.com/a-mom-goes-to-a-hearing-about-minimum-wage-to-make-a-point-i-think-it-worked?c=ufb2)
Wolf, Connor D. The Daily Caller. Aug 25, 2015. (http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/25/the-living-wage-movement-could-mean-the-end-of-tips/)
say goodbye to MacDonald’s Dollar Menu — now people who can’t afford to eat won’t be able to afford to eat. Waitresses will lose work because prices will go so high that people will stop coming in, which means fewer workers will be needed to cover any given shift, so instead of working for slave labor plus tips, they will be on welfare / food stamps / unemployment instead. — It’s all fouled up. The free market should include free labor rates as well.
That’s the most insane view I’ve ever heard.
The only thing that changes, is the amount of Electricity and Gas bills that can finally be paid in one cheque instead of scrounging off Kraft Dinner for 2 weeks while the dumbass rig pigs tell you you don’t work hard enough.
Actually since everyone will make more more people will be willing to splurge on going out more often.
Nobody should be eating McDonald’s anyways it’s unhealthy, use the dollar go buy some seeds and grow your own.
Maybe the world doesn’t need as many restaurants – if it requires so many people to be unhappy in their work or wages – if the only way for a restaurant to be financially successful is to keep wages low – which in turn make employees unhappy, which of course it should – then maybe it’s not a good thing in the first place.
When will America stop relying on slave labor to make the rich, richer…
ANYONE who is willing to work a full 40 hour work week, should be able to support a family! FULL STOP! No special degree, no special skills, just the value of one full humans worth!
ANYONE who says otherwise, is saying that “certain jobs” arent worth doing… And therefore, anyone “stooping” to do those jobs, isnt truly human… Fun fact, those “worthless jobs” are often the very foundation of our society!!!
Yep, I notice the rig pigs mouth off the Mcdonald’s workers, yet are there every single morning
People want minimum to go up so badly. But do they ever consider the fact that if minimum goes up, so will everything else. food, bills, clothes, homes, etc. If 15 is considered minimum, what will higher paying jobs move up to? 25? 30? it doesn’t matter what you raise the wage to, cause everything else will move up with it and we will continue to struggle as we are now. all we can do is work as hard as we’re able to get into better paying jobs. what might actually help, is making education cheaper or free. education is the first important step we take that decides what kind of careers we’ll have. so we need to make our education more affordable instead of worrying about wages right now.
You’d think that, but inflation already happened. inflation went up and the minimum wage didn’t follow. when our parents were younger, minimum wage was enough to support a place, feed yourself AND go to college, and that was on a part time weekend job. Nothing more. Today, you can’t even feed yourself with that, let alone support a place or put yourself through college. The minimum wage never went up when from inflation, it was supposed to. the rich saw a chance and took it, this allowed them to amass much higher profits, hence the profit boons that have happened in the last 20-40 years for big corporations. The minimum wage NEEDS to go up or it’s not fair. So yeah, some business will try to scrabble to protect their poor losses, losses that actually wont affect the company if they take it out of those big fat bonuses they give themselves. Which means, the world will only get harder from such an increase, if the big greedy asshole rich people want to stay being greedy. THAT IS NOT THE WORKERS FAULT. It is not the workers fault that they need it to live, it is not the workers fault that they need to protest their right to a wage that lets them bloody survive! And they should not be the ones to suffer for it! Give the workers what they deserve, and tell those rich assholes hogging the rest of the money and fucking up your economy what they need to hear! That they are crooks ruining everything!
Raising the min is an arbitrary and stupid concept, the only way to fix the problem is to chain the maximum amount one can make as a CEO to the minimum they pay, in example one could say that no employer should be able to make more in a month than their lowest paid makes in a year. It creates a better wage pool and doesn’t cause inflation like raising the min does
Tipping should be optional, if the customer wants to tip the individual that served them, or the kitchen staff. Heck that’s how it is in the rest off the world.
A tip is for better than expected service and people that work in a full time job should be payed properly for that. Tips should be icing on the cake not a can’t survive without.
No person on a full time job should have a need for food stamps or welfare.
The fast food industry has already priced themselves higher than the well managed restaurants in my area of NY. This whole argument by McDonalds is bullshit.
What I don’t understand is if its only fast food workers that get a raise, how is that fair to the other jobs that make minimum wage at factories or grocery stores or gas stations? Why are rude burger flippers the only ones who are worth the raise when I have yet to go in a fast food restaurant and have a correct order, but I’ve watched a 70 year old woman run a bag of groceries out to a customer who forget it. I’ve seen a young woman smile at customers after being robbed at a gas station. I’ve seen factory worker sweat so bad from having no a/c that they have hest exhaustion. Yet only fast food is worth a pay raise?
if you don’t want a minimum wage pay don’t work a minimum effort job. it takes a minimum intelligence to work one of those jobs so why should you get anything besides minimum pay. It’s called going to school and getting a real job. Not flipping a burger and expecting to get 15 dollars for that. People are so lazy. I want more pay but don’t want to go get a degree; even though all I do is go flip burgers and poor fries in a basket and lower that basket into grease. it’s a minimum wage job because people who work them have minimum payments, like people in high school or people in college who barely have anything except small bills, need gas to get around, food to survive, and money to go out and party or drink on. People need to get over themselves.
she needs $1175 a month to survive and says she falls $400 short… so she’s making $775 per month? at $8.75/hr? so at 13% income tax shes making roughly $900 gross monthly income??? $900/$8.75=*102.86* 102.86(hours worked to reach $900/mo)/4(number of weeks within a month)= 25.71 hours per week. my question for this woman is… why in the hell do you not have a second job to reach that 40 hours per week? its not the wage that is killing her its her laziness. she needs to teach that kid that hard work and determination can equal success, not whining and asking for more money to do less work.
I work with special needs children. My town doesn’t want to give us benefits. So, they hire Kelly Services to manage their aides. I make close to $11.57 an hour. Disgusting that fast food workers feel entitled to $15.00 an hour.
I agree! There are people out there with much harder jobs that don’t get paid 15 an hour. A fast food job IS NOT worth 15 dollars an hour. Half of the time they’re not even capable of doing their job correctly.
They are asking for all minimum wage to go up…. She just happens to work in fast food………..
The choices you make in your life affect your thoughts and even needs later in life. Unfortunately I don’t sympathize with her for having to support her and her child, as that is a choice you make and you have to life with your choices and understand consequences. (Unless of course she had an experience significant enough to make her have had that child against her own will) It is also unfortunate about her previous loss in another profession but the following is why:
What she doesn’t understand is that at $15/hour, McDonald’s will be a lot more selective on who they hire in order to maximize their labor and production. People would be somewhat more incentivized to work at a place like that, thus creating more competition for her, a larger prospective workforce and potential candidates, and make this specific job market in turn much more competitive.
Who is McDonald’s going to hire for $15/hr? Someone with very moderate experience and no formal education or someone who has a college degree and/or better supplemental experience? It’s an easy answer. It’s becomes essentially work place Darwinism, with the strongest candidates outperforming other candidates for the same wage based on performance, ability, and education. (Her age also plays a major factor) This could apply to any sector or any job market, and in most cases it already does.
I’m sorry but working as a server compared to working in McDonald’s is 2 totally diff jobs. Serving requires hard steady work with multi tasking carrying heavy trays constant socializing repeat trips to the tables and memorizing each customers needs. Not just stand at a Til and fill a bag and take cash…. serving deserves tips even if the wage goes up. We go over and beyond to make a memorable experience. Not just try to remember to put a ketchup or napkin in the bag. Rant over.