True. The wages laws that govern service staff is generally written as a conditional, where the employee earns the greater of:

1. Standard minimum wage 2. Some value less than minimum wage + tips

If the employee doesn't break minimum wage by adding their wage+tips, the employer has to make them whole. And then likely cut their hours and force them to look for other work.

>the employer has to make them whole

No they don't, because what are you going to do about it? Hire a lawyer on your minimum wage salary (assuming you even know you're getting cheated)?

Every employee in the United States can file complaints with their state labor board and the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division.

If this is both true and effective, why is wage theft still extremely prevalent?

Because people who are in a position to be earning those kinds of wages heavily correlate with other situational factors (social, educational, legal, etc.) which may prevent them from reporting the violations. And, the employers who tend to engage in wage theft are generally small businesses, which there are a ton of.

Would it shock you to find out that many, many employers break the law?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Wage_the...

https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-th...

To everyone: please tip. It is in fact very likely that any given restaurant is not and would not make up the difference in pay for an under-tipped employee.

> It is in fact very likely that any given restaurant is not and would not make up the difference in pay for an under-tipped employee.

Your sources do not support this claim.

Here, let me quote from the article I linked:

>Survey research shows that well over two-thirds of low-wage workers have been the victims of wage theft.

"Over two-thirds" means you are more likely than not to eat at a restaurant that has cheated its employees.

I followed some of the links and could not find a primary source for the data. (Links were either broken, redirected to the same page, or lead to other secondary sources.) So please link that if you've got it.

> "Over two-thirds" means you are more likely than not to eat at a restaurant that has cheated its employees.

No. It doesn't. It means that, in their entire lifetime as employees of any number of employers, two-thirds of employees, at least once, experienced wage theft in some form.

That's a much different statement and says nothing at all about whether those employees were robbed of overtime, asked to work for free, or their employers claimed tip credits for tips the employees didn't receive.

>That's a much different statement and says nothing at all about whether those employees were robbed of overtime, asked to work for free, or their employers claimed tip credits for tips the employees didn't receive.

These are all examples of "cheating employees", I'm glad we agree.

The only thing we agree on is that the items in the previous post are examples of wage theft.

You've convinced me that you are trolling. You haven't addressed any arguments or provided any meaningful support to your pretty extreme claims. Your proposed solution, even if it were effective, would exclude large numbers of non-tipped employees.

Even if, as you assert without evidence, the various labor boards around the country are ineffective, providing them with the funding that would otherwise go to tipped employees would be a much better solution than tipping. It would simultaneously remove resources from thieving employers, make them easier to identify, make it harder for them to find labor, and provide greater resources for those trying to stop them.

Your original claim (that every tipped employee is making at least minimum wage and employers don't break the law) is in fact more extreme and yet you've provided zero evidence. I've provided plenty of evidence, you just don't like it because it's uncomfortable to think about.

In fact, here, have some more evidence, I'm eager to find out what's wrong these these sources:

http://wagejustice.org/wage-theft-facts/

https://unprotectedworkers.org/index.php/broken_laws/index

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/18/news/economy/wage-theft-wor...

That isn’t my original claim.

It’s also not my job to disprove your unsupported claim by scouring sources you’ve just googled. Even if I stipulated that your sources are credible and true, which they may be, you are making massive leaps in logic in order to support your claim and not even attempting to explain how you got there or addressing my very direct criticisms.

That I am “uncomfortable” talking about this is just a lazy and ironic ad hominem argument. I’ve been talking about it. You’ve been avoiding that conversation. I’m fine talking about it. I’m just not willing to talk to you anymore.