alt Hacker News> But, when three members of the group came forward to testify, all expressed support for the Tipped Workers Protection Act and opposition to the One Fair Wage Act, which they portrayed as an effort to steal their tips
This article is missing a real issue here by trying to make the story all about the employers. Many workers like the tip system because it creates inequality among the restaurant workers. Good servers can earn a lot more money than what they’d earn if every server were paid the same, fair wage.
My mom used to work at a furniture store as a floor sales associate on commission. She would regularly clear $120,000/year (this was 15 years ago, so like $180,000 today). A generous wage for the job at the time probably would’ve been $50,000 or so. She would’ve fought such a policy tooth and nail.
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I don't think you read the article. It explains that those three members who came forward were not actually servers, but restaurant management & owners. Additionally, the article is not missing this issue you call out. The author goes so far as to discuss Casino dealers in Vegas who would stand to gain the most out of this sales tax proposal (sales commissions in your anecdote do not count as tips). But primarily, the author is concerned about the 1/3 of tipped workers who do not pay federal income tax and are at risk of falling below the poverty line due to reductions in their minimum wage.
Sales' commissions and servers' tips is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Servers also know that if tips are outlawed, they will never make that much money again.
It's possible for high end bartenders or servers to make over $500 a night in tips. The whiplash of moving into true salary or hourly work is an open secret in the high end service industry. This is why you see some old waiters and bartenders hanging around, when some people consider the service industry "entry level."
This is also why I don't like to listen to them complain about their jobs lol. The difficulty of work to income ratio is unique to this industry.
Some people always like the status quo: no bloc is 100% consistent. With numbers like what you provide, though, this would be a minority of affected people... though, the ones with the most money to lobby.
I wonder if paying servers a commission on the food sales would improve things somewhat. At least it force employers to include that into the price of the items
>creates inequality
Did you mean that it rewards them for their efforts?
Is the definition of a good server in this case one who can serve more tables than others in the same amount of time? In most places tips are mandatory and % does not depend much on anything unless someone messed up.
Commission on sales is very different from restaurant tips.