Is there any other country other than the US where paying service workers below minimum wage is legal or acceptable? I've been around a fair bit of Europe and surroundings and I've never encountered the US system.
There's also no other developed country that has drug problems like the US. If you stop treating people with respect, they need some way to cope. First painkillers, then the opioid crisis, now alcohol-related deaths are on the rise. And I recently read that the new hip thing are LSD nose spray trips timed to your lunch break.
LSD can't be "timed to your lunch break" as far as I know. Whether micro, threshold, or full-on trip, LSD usually has a duration of around 8-12 hours before you're back to baseline (and tolerance is long, usually two weeks before another similarly-dosed experience would have the same potency)
It does if you’re part of the moral panic that deems substances “evil” and thinks they should all be banned. You know, the same people who would rather kids die than have access to testing services because it might encourage some of them.
This is pedantic, but service workers in the US are generally payed the legal minimum wage.
The distinction is that a different law exists for that category of workers, not that they aren't paid legal wages.
Other countries do make exceptions to their pay rules. For instance, younger people that are likely to be working temporarily may be excluded from benefits rules.
This is even more pedantic but no, service workers are not generally payed the legal minimum wage.
Wage theft by employers is over $20 billion a year (more than all other kinds of theft combined) and wage theft happens predominantly to those being paid minimum wage.
17% of low wage earners are subject to wage theft -- 2.4 million people just in the 10 most populous states -- and the average amount of theft is $64 a week. Which doesn't sound like a lot but is 25% of their weekly wages.
While not legally the same, the UK comes close with its minimum wage/living wage gap: society acknowledges that minimum wage is not enough to make a living (in some areas) so it expects workers to be paid the living wage instead. I don't think this is mandated by law though, so you could have situations where workers are paid below the socially expected "minimum" wage.
However, those countries generally have decent benefits and social housing, so people's net wages provide an adequate standard of living. And the wages are collectively negotiated by unions in a way that is now very rare in the anglosphere: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/12/nordic-countri...
You're right that those countries don't have a government mandated minimum wage. That doesn't mean there is no minimum wage in practice though.
Scandinavian countries have massive powerful trade unions that work to negotiate standards and wages for everyone. Even if you're not actively part of a union, your employer will almost certainly use Collective Labor Agreement negotiated by the trade union. This CLA guarantees certain things like vacation time, minimum wages, break times, etc.
Now you could not use a CLA drafted by a union and instead try to fuck people over with your own contracts. That's not very likely to work though since these countries tend to have strong social welfare systems coupled with free healthcare. So if people quite due to shitty pay and/or hours, they can still make do with social benefits. Also people here in Finland at least, know that for most jobs you absolutely want a CLA drafted by one of the unions because that CLA protects you.
Most companies use the CLA's as a base and allow employees to negotiate better contracts if they want to. E.g you can ask for less hours and more pay, the CLA generally only guarantees minimums. Now an employer can always try to renegotiate the agreement with the union for their workers, but you better be damn sure you treat your workers right since if the unions decide that you're not, they will fuck you up.
These unions are massive and hold a ton of power. In Finland over 70% belong to a union and it is not uncommon for them to strike if the employers are trying to fuck them up. The best example of this is the recent chaos with the Finnish Postal Service.
To give you an idea on what happened, the postal service tried to renegotiate the CLA they used, which would have resulted in worse pay and hours for the workers. Union was taking none of it and went to strike. The postal service tried to get around this using questionable means which broke International Labour Organizations rules. This led to a ton of sympathy strikes which eventually ground the nation to a standstill.
Public transportation froze, flights were cancelled, trains didn't run, all goods transported by postal cars were boycotted by unions this led to stores not being stocked up as they should have for example, ferries and cruise ships under Finnish flag froze. Among numerous other things. The unions eventually won after inconveniencing thousands of people and costing corporations tens of millions of euros.
The workers didn't get shafted and their rights were protected even without a government mandated minimum wage.
Even with unions this probably wouldn’t happen in America. People just don’t organize, strike, or care about their civic duties or expressing their opinion. I don’t know what happened to us. Maybe we’re all just lazy now?
I suspect that US laws have made unions mostly toothless. I know this has happened to teachers unions. It's illegal for teachers unions in TN to strike(I don't know about other states). What power does a union have if they can't strike? Also Unions have been demonized in the US media and now public perception of unions is extremely low. Which is sad because they're one of the few tools workers have to bargain for their own rights.
Well, it's only public service unions that can't strike (it depends on state/federal/etc. so there are a lot of things here that I can't accurately comment on) and even so I'm not sure that I find myself agreeing with collective bargaining for public employees either. It's a topic for discussion, for sure.
But the point I wanted to make was that I think even if we had stronger unions, Americans like myself have become lazy and afraid of being inconvenienced. We had Occupy Wall-Street, but I'm just not sure. I just don't envision my fellow Americans striking, together, for things. We're barely united on anything as it is right now.
Just some general thoughts/comments. I'd love to hear other perspectives on this.
Now you could not use a CLA drafted by a union and instead try to fuck people over with your own contracts.
That would be illegal in Switzerland (not really a business hating commie hell hole). When a collective agreement exists for specific areas it applies to all companies in that area.
That's not to say that dodgy firms don't try to get around it, but if they're caught it it gets expensive and troublesome. And checks (alas, I don't know if sufficiently) are conducted.
It's not so clear as it's not entirely objective to determine what companies exist in a certain area.
The national mail in Finland is tasked to do letter service, which no other postal company is doing. Letter service is also the most human intensive job there is.
> The Scandinavian countries don't have a minimum wage either
Their unions regulate wages, and in practice this means the same thing as a government-mandated minimum wage. It just so happens that their structure is a little different.
> Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until fairly recently
We don't really have a minimum wage in Austria either, but wages are regulated per industry. So employers are still required to pay certain wages, even though we don't have a general minimum wage.
And there's no such thing as including tips in the wage, tips are always extra.
(There is one major loophole, of course, which is hiring people as contractors, but that requires convincing the authorities that your employees are not really employees)
The minimum wage ensures that those 'poor people' can afford to eat.
The countries you mention don't need minimum wages set because they have other mechanisms or even just social norms that ensure nobody is having to work 8 jobs to try to feed their kids.
Right, which is exactly what I was saying, those societies mentioned as not having a minimum wage tend to have other mechanisms to either set an effective minimum or structures to help out. It's not like those other countries without minimum wages also give poorer people the finger in every other way, like the US does, and as I imagine would be the case in your (obviously) libertarian fantasy-land.
Might want to update your profile then, it still says London.
What do we know about Singapore? It has masses and masses of public housing, so people are looked after in a way that doesn't happen in the US. The US is very keen to push this sort of thing on employers - see also health insurance.
It's a different model and I would agree probably a worse one, but either way it's the state ensuring people have their basic needs met.
Minimum wages don't outlaw poor people's jobs. They just cause poor people to be paid more since the more money that moves from rich to poor, the richer the whole society gets. You need to keep the money moving.
> The Scandinavian countries don't have a minimum wage either
That didn't mean that people were working several jobs to get by, not that they were paying to work. Maybe it was the easily accessible public welfare that forced employers to pay a living wage, or the large proportion of union membership.
This is a misunderstanding on your part as the system was/largely still is simply different There was no government mandated minimum wage but the pay in sectors is negotiated and fixed by negotiation between employer and employee representative organisations per sector. The rise of new kinds of pay models to undercut these systems fueled a push to in addition introduce a minimum wage. For most places the minimum wage does not replace the negotiated rates but just covers sectors for which there's no negotiation system.
Why do I keep expecting Canada to be better than it actually is?
Although, a quick web search shows that at least in Quebec, minimum wage for tipped workers is 1.9$ lower vs. not applying at all in many US states - better, but still sad.
Yes, tipping culture is alive and well in Canada. A common misconception among foreigners is that the existence of universal healthcare means Canada also shares the economic structures of Scandinavian countries. It doesn't. Canada's economy is structured similarly to the US, but much more dependent on natural resources.
The service sector is actually considered to be a low-cost offshoring center for American businesses, due to lower median salaries, and a weak Canadian dollar.
I moved from US to Australia and then Canada. Canada is almost the same as US with consumer rights, customer service, citizen rights etc which is that's it's almost non existent.
Australia is one of the best countries imo. Minimum wage with penalty can be up to as high as $100 per hour ( yes $100) and starts around $25+
The minimum wage is $19.49 AUD which is significantly lower in USD. Many industries will have higher minimum wages, but it certainly doesn't start at $25.
Misconception. Service workers must be paid the higher of state, city, or federal minimum wage. If wages plus tips are not equal to or greater than the minimum wage then the minimum wage must be paid.
If everyone suddenly stopped tipping then service workers would default to minimum wage. For anyone with a different experience your employer was breaking the law.
But what I think you’ll find is that it is the service workers themselves who prefer working for tips.
I’m sure most people would prefer more money. But if service workers were paid “normal” wages people wouldn’t feel guilted into tipping.
Minimum wage in NYC is $15/hour and $10/hour for food service workers. Some restaurants have started paying their servers more and not allowing tips. But are the employees actually earning more? I doubt it.
> Some restaurants have started paying their servers more and not allowing tips.
Service bad? -> complain to employer, employer punishes employee
Service OK? -> employer pays employee for work done
Service good? -> employer pays employee for work done and customer pays employee for good work (and employee shares it with all the other employees who are in the chain of service).
In the UK wait staff are tipped based on service and are still paid at least minimum wage.
Tipping is generally based on the quality of the establishment, you tip at a higher class restaurant but you don't at restaurants that are franchised or common brands.
That's barely the case any more. The amount of gig-economy wage slavery in all countries is sky rocketing. No country is really spared. You can find people everywhere who are juggling e-scooter, ride share, food delivery etc jobs at an excruciating schedule for barely any money.
In Sweden in particular, it seems that the waves of refugees in recent years have only fueled this.
If those refugees are grateful for the opportunity to work and earn, and are in much better conditions now than in the countries they fled, and also wouldn't necessarily qualify for higher wage jobs because of language/cultural/educational barriers, why is that so bad? And if it allows more prosperous Swedes to enjoy the convenience of food delivery for a cost that they think is worth it, is that so terrible? To me, the market is working here. People are getting what they want. If these companies didn't exist, both customers and workers would be doing the next most attractive thing to them, which would be by definition worse from their viewpoints. Customers would be wasting their valuable time driving to get food or eating less appealing food at home, and workers would get some other menial, low paying job. If the only available jobs had a high minimum wage and benefits, then they would simply go unemployed and become wards of the state.
The problem is the market isn't efficient, and the middlemen (Uber, DoorDash, ...) are getting an outsized share of the revenue relative to their only essential contribution which is (automated) organization. They are only able to command that percentage because regulations filter out potential smaller undercutting competitors. That's also why they fail in "developing" countries with more relaxed policing. Not because there isn't the necessary wealth gap between workers and customers, but because they are undercut by "regular" black market workers.
If they really aren't adding enough value relative to what they extract, then they are opening up a competitive weakness that eventually should be exploited by a new entrant in the marketplace. Right now, the whole area is being opened up by these intermediaries, which are spending enormous amounts on marketing/advertising/promotion to increase customer awareness of the offering and to establish relationships with restaurants. Once this market is developed, a new entrant with a comparable offering but much lower take rate could make sense-- so long as they are very efficient and low cost in providing this service. The fact that DoorDash is making zero/negative profit now suggests that they aren't taking too much of the pie. If they were, they simply wouldn't be able to recruit couriers once the word was out that it was a bad deal.
Have you been to Europe? The standard of living is below what is expected in the states.
It's nice to say removing tips and adding vacation is what workers want, but how will United States workers afford premium phones and buy larger houses?
I get why this is being downvoted, because treating an entire group of people as having one mindset and expectations isn't great, but it's a valid call out.
Expectations are different. It's an entirely different set of cultures. More space, more premium goods, more modern conveniences seem to be common goals more Americans share than not. We like new cars and big televisions. So it's not surprising that employment compensation is oriented toward that, and less toward things Europeans tend to value like healthcare, social services, etc.
This all breaks down, of course, when wages are low _and_ you don't have a social safety net.
Have you been to the US? "Workers" here do not "buy larger houses", we rent tiny apartments when we can and live in our cars/streets/friends couches/wherever we can otherwise. "Premium phones" are irrelevant, the difference between a new iPhone and an Android is maybe 1 week of rent.
If you're in the US and your problems are vacation time, "buy[ing] larger houses", etc., you're not in a position to even get tips. You would be in a privileged class of educated workers with a perfectly fine quality of living.
We're talking about the average US worker. This person has never taken a vacation in their life because they've never been in a position to. They take what they can get, which in the case of the gig economy is often well below minimum wage. If they have a roof over their head it's likely only by the grace of a wealthier family member. This person works their ass off performing the unskilled labor that makes our world go round and they get treated like a criminal for it.
This is essentially all people like Bernie are proposing, it's really insane how much backlash there is against the idea from people who would only benefit from such a redistribution of wealth. It's Stockholm Syndrome 100% honestly
This is absolute nonsense, as evidenced by countries where this is not the case (e.g. all of Europe AFAIK). Furthermore, if you have a point to make this comment does not do it. It's just some vague handwaving with fancy words.
There's a middle ground here. A restaurant owner can decide to put out a sign that says "our employees are paid a good wage, tipping is not expected".
In my area, restaurants are allowed to pay waiters less because tipping is expected, and a restaurant is required to pay workers more if they don't make minimum wage after tips. It's really odd, and we should just remove the exclusion for restaurants. I think simply removing the exception will end up fixing the culture around tipping.
When customers tip, and total wages in the tipped jobs are thus higher than in the non-tipped alternatives, workers will change jobs until expected total wages are about equal.
What works in other countries, eg Japan or Australia, is that different social norms lead to much less total tipping. But you can't transform eg American into Japan or Australia at a whim.
It's up to customers to make tipping the exception and not the norm. But that's hard: because the individual tip goes directly to that starving poor devil who served you and has a relatively big impact on their life, but only a very small impact on workers' expectations when changing jobs, there's a 'tragedy of the commons' going on: each individual tip you give provides you with a nice warm fuzzy feeling of altruism, but it damages your total goal of having decent base pay.
So, it's very hard for individual customers to change that. But: individual employers can drive change. They can forbid tips and prominently display that they do so, so that both prospective workers and customers now what they are in for.
Prospective workers will demand higher base pay. Customers will take the lack of tip into account when comparing prices.
A Google search for 'restaurant bans tips' shows a lot of write-ups about experiments. It's not a panacea, of course.
I don't think the system will fix itself by banning tips. That doesn't help anyone.
What society should do is require a decent base pay (regardless of tip). That way I know that my server can make ends meet if I tip them or not, and tipping them becomes a curtesy, not a necessity.
I think a lot of people making comments like this don't realize that the market price of waitstaff's labor is probably similar to fast food or other retail work--$10/hour, maybe a bit more. With tipping, waitstaff can make really good money, to the point that any efforts on the part of a restaurant owner to replace tipping with higher wages tends to result in the entire staff quitting.
My point: If "society" "requires a decent base pay", then waiters are going to get shafted, unless by "decent" you mean $40+/hour. The people getting screwed by tipping culture are not the front-of-house workers, but the other employees and the customers.
I think the most compelling argument is to point out that the people doing the real work in a restaurant--the cooks and the dishwashers--are paid much worse than the waitstaff, who really aren't even necessary.
> I think the most compelling argument is to point out that the people doing the real work in a restaurant--the cooks and the dishwashers--are paid much worse than the waitstaff, who really aren't even necessary.
the qualifications for FOH vs BOH staff are really not that different, except that you have to speak decent english to be a server. either one you can get hired on the spot with no experience if youre willing to start on the low end. ask any cook whether they would rather do the server's job and they'll probably say no.
I'm not suggesting to "replace" tipping with anything. I'm saying you should pay waiters enough so they don't depend on tips. Tips are a nice bonus, but they shouldn't be necessary.
Which is the situation in most places other than the US.
Here in Austria waiters are grateful if you tip them, and they might think you're cheap if you don't tip, but they still make enough to live even without tips.
It's not up to customers if the laws in the US are changed to stop the (IMHO abusive) practice of paying below minimum and then expecting tips to make up the shortfall.
Tips should be about rewarding going BEYOND the normal... not as a basis of someone's wage.