Note that the sum of wage + tips must reach the minimum wage, or else the employer is required to make up the difference. It's a common misconception that tipped workers can earn less, in total, than minimum wage.
In just a quick look, I found this:
> 5. Wage theft is particularly acute in food and drink service, and restaurants across the country have been found to be in violation of wage and hour laws. It is true that the law requires restaurants to ensure that tipped workers receive at least the regular minimum wage when their tips are included, but the reality is that huge numbers of restaurants—helped by too-weak enforcement efforts—ignore these requirements. In investigations of over 9,000 restaurants, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) found that 84 percent of investigated restaurants were in violation of wage and hour laws, including nearly 1,200 violations of the requirement to bring tipped workers’ wages up to the minimum wage. Among the restaurants that were investigated, tipped workers were cheated out of nearly $5.5 million. Workers in the food and drink service industries are more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than workers in other industries. [0]
[0]: https://www.epi.org/blog/seven-facts-about-tipped-workers-an...
But tips are also often used as a performance evaluation metric, and falling low enough that the employer has to make it up often leads to termination, so, where this is possible (as it most obviously is where cash tips are involved) its not uncommon for employees to be incentivized to artificially inflate tips.
Eliminating the lower tipped based minimum wage (which, when followed, means that tips actually go to the employer, not the tipped employee, to a point) means that, even where this practice and pressure exists, it doesn’t leas to suppressing wages below the general mininum.
Also, I don't see any reason why violating the law in that way should be any more common than violating it by paying non-tipped workers less than minimum wage. Either one would require the same degree, and same kind, of fraud. So tipped workers should be no worse off in practice than non-tipped workers.
That's still kind of a dick move, man...
That's the social contract -- you go to a full service restaurant, you tip 20% of the bill.
I can understand for things like even retail and other non-traditional PoS stuff but for full service dining, this isn't new.
If you want to opt out of participating in the whole tip structure there, then you probably should opt out of participating in full service dining as well.
When did it go from 15% to 20%? Is it because people don't tip in cash anymore, making it more difficult for service staff to evade taxes?
I've actually decided the real problem is clueless people like you trying to tip police others over immaterial minutia like exact tip percentage. Do my napkin FFS and see for yourself what my percentage averages out to. You're the ones manufacturing frantic guilt. It's like atheists and unknowns. Christ.
Isn’t the idea that servers knowingly make a gamble that they can generate more from tips (performance) than less than minimum wage?
So if you order a drink that costs $1000, the server should get $200 for that?
Until then, I have a rule: I only tip when someone is working outside of regular working hours to act as my servant. That's like evening dinner service where someone is actually waiting my table. Sometimes I'll tip at lunch for pleasant service even though it breaks my rule because I'm human. And sometimes for coffee early in the morning. I also have tip bands. I tip $5 up to $50 ticket and $10 up to $100 tocket, on the pre-tax and pre-other-fees price.