No, what I’m saying is that their total pay, wages plus tips, must meet the minimum wage under federal law. People who claim otherwise are not giving the full picture.
You’ve just linked the old 1994 paper that was referenced in the Washington Post article, but is not the main paper being discussed by the OP. I believe the OP mostly refers to the new University of Washington study which I believe is this paper (which was actually linked to in the second article that Quartz linked to):
Not sure if there is a free version of the working paper available to the general public.
An interesting note is that these researchers also studied the rise of minimum wage in Seattle from $9.74 –> $11 and found essentially negligible net impact to total wages from that change (https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/MinWageReport-July2016_Final.pdf), but the new study found a reduction in low income total wages within Seattle.
Did you even read the thread? Or the OP for that matter? The study is showing detrimental effects from the raising of min wage.
Did you even read the cite you listed? The data is from the late 90’s. The argument can easily be made that the wealth/internet boom from the late 90s off set wage increases. The speculate as far out as 2004, pre-recession.
Other critiques include: the number of jobs in traditionally low income strata remained the same… – where are the new jobs? Wealth boom of that era probably meant that people who took lesser paying jobs now took better paying jobs in their career where they otherwise not as competitive. Now that firms have more money, they expand their hiring criteria.
Look at Corry El’s post on a similar Card and Krueger study. So, maybe we can count on two studies that counter traditional thinking taught in how many hundreds of colleges that teach economics?
Hell, look at your own cite for criticisms: firms cut back hours; some workers and firms understate hours and agree on lower pay so that workers get more state aid and firms pay less in wages; and, incomplete compliance (so that some survey takers are reporting certain data, others are simply not following the law). Do any of these sound worker friendly or increasing jobs? How many automated check out/ticket dispensers/parking machines, etc. have you seen? All those cost jobs too as low skill jobs are automated out of existence. This is what happens when min wage increases.
Uh, no. As I carefully pointed out in the second post of this thread with detailed quotes from the OP’s link, the study in question is claiming detrimental effects from the raising of min wage. But those claims are being strongly questioned by other researchers because of what they consider potential defects in the study’s methodology.
If you read that post more carefully, you’ll see that the issue of minimum wage impacts on low-income workers is, as I said, complicated. You are wrong to jump to the conclusion that those impacts have been definitively shown to be negative just on your hasty reading of what this working paper claims to have found.
“Two men say they’re Jesus; one of them must be wrong…”
Not if we’re living in an ‘American Gods’ world. There were a lot of Jesus’ at Ostara’s house.
Or they can choose to: reduce profits, decrease bonuses to management, cut costs elsewhere or reduce the $100 MM they pay the CEO. Also higher wages tend to lead to better worker retention (lowering costs) and higher productivity.
Not “Simple economics”:rolleyes:
That is a 1994 paper.
Leaving aside that this is only true of large multinational corporations, why would a business do this instead of, oh, say putting in more automation? Getting rid of some check out people by putting in automated checkout machines, getting rid of some wait staff by putting in wireless kiosks, downsizing to a single person through the use of expert systems and heavy software automation, etc etc? Or just cutting staff to the bone? At a certain price point for labor on the low end these are going to be viable options, especially for companies who could (but won’t) ‘reduce profits, decrease bonuses to management, cut costs elsewhere or reduce the $100 MM they pay the CEO’.
Clearly you have absolutely no understanding of federal law regarding tipped employees.
Well let’s deal with the irrelevances first:
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If the CEO is being paid a hundred million dollars a year, and of course 99.99% of all companies don’t pay their CEO a hundredth that much o it’s kind of a silly argument, then if it is wise to reduce that amount it would be wise to reduce that no matter what the minimum wage was. If the CEO’s overpaid, they’re overpaid. It would not matter if the minimum wage was seven bucks, fifteen bucks, or fifty, or if the company had no employees making the minimum wage at all. So it’s a complete irrelevance.
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If costs could be cut elsewhere, same thing; why not cut them anyway? Do you believe it the case that companies have lots of easily cut costs?
An employee is either worth paying $15 an hour or they aren’t. In a situation where minimum wage employees are worth $17 an hour, the company will suck it up. In situations where they are worth $14, those people are going to lose their jobs one way or another. There is no getting around that by dreaming up “cut costs elsewhere.” It does not make any sense to pay a person $15 an hour for work that isn’t worth $15 an hour. It doesn’t matter what you’re spending on pencils.
As to the claim that higher wages lead to better productivity, that’s sometimes true, but it doesn’t follow from that that a higher minimum wage will lead to better productivity. One of the reasons higher wages lead to better productivity is that skilled employees won’t leave for better paying jobs. That’s not relevant if you’re talking about the pool of minimum wage workers; they don’t gain a pay advantage by moving to another minimum wage job.
(emphasis mine)
Respectfully that doesn’t appear at all to be what you said.
You specifically claimed that “food service workers were paid at least the minimum wage”.
Here was your original post:
There was no caveat in your claim “food service workers”. You didn’t say “most” or even the majority, you stated “food service workers”.
I responded like this because I’m quite familiar with the industry including having talked to managers who have freely admitted that if a waitress at the end of I believe it was two weeks or a month(I can’t remember which) reported making less than 10% of all the food “she”(yes she said she without a pause) sold in tips then she was deemed an inferior server and promptly fired.
This wasn’t a gotcha question. I apologize if it came across that way.
You responded, quite reasonably as I think most people who didn’t realize how tipped employees were exempt from minimum wage laws.
In retrospect I should have worded the last sentence differently because it came off more snarky than intended. Once again, my apologies.
I was merely trying to illustrate that the idea that food service workers are paid the minimum wage is simply wrong.
Obviously the Glassdoor survey isn’t done scientifically or peer reviewed but I have little reason to believe it’s inaccurate. Most servers at such places in my experience fall into one of three categories. The first is they quickly quit, the second is they get deemed inferior servers and are fired, and the last and this is a very small category, they’re really good at it.
That’s why so many on the survey reported making not just below the minimum wage but vastly below the minimum wage.
That’s the why the turnover rates at such places is astronomical.
Respectfully I have a very good understanding of how federal law works regarding tipped employees.
The truth is that it’s extremely common if not the norm for most servers and bartenders to not make just less than minimum wage, but substantially less than minimum wage and that is assuming they’re reporting their tips accurately, which I don’t think is always a good assumption.
They ARE paid at the least the minimum wage, by law.
I don’t really care about your anecdotes about the managers or waitresses you know.
IOW, since this is Great Debates, please provide a legit cite. Thank you.
I didn’t use anecdotal data.
You demanded a “cite” which you put all in capitals “CITE” and I provided one.
I’ll repost it here.
This is a survey of workers for Texas Roadhouse who overwhelmingly report being paid less than the federal minimum wage.
Now, you can argue that the servers who report they only made $3.75 an hour were lying or that disgruntled employees were more likely to respond than happy ones but wouldn’t you agree that the most likely explanation is that the reality of the situation is that law requiring them to be compensated at least to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour doesn’t work the way it is supposed to?
Once again, I wasn’t trying play “gotcha”, I was making a point.
[QUOTE=Ibn Warraq]
I’ll repost it here.
[/QUOTE]
The link doesn’t work for me.
Are they including tips? Because if they are and they are still below the minimum then they should be taking that up with the labor people. I’m pretty sure that Texas Roadhouse is big enough to care if their workers are making a legitimate case before the labor board that they are being underpaid.
Texas Roadhouse (as well as other restaurants) are required, by law, to make up the difference if the tips plus wage falls below minimum wage, and if they aren’t doing that then that’s a serious issue. As your link doesn’t work, for me at least, it’s hard to say if you are bringing up a legitimate point. I’m pretty skeptical that such a large company would not be following federal labor law, though.
Here it is. It’s from Glassdoor.com. https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Texas-Roadhouse-Hourly-Pay-E18664.htm
Here it is. It’s from Glassdoor.com. https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Texas-Roadhouse-Hourly-Pay-E18664.htm
No, I don’t know if they’re including tips or not. What I suspect happens is that this is a good reason why the turnover rates at such places is so high.
Is it working now?
http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article88080797.html
Obviously. It’s not the same thing but they’ve been nailed for violating federal labor law before.
Let’s keep in mind a lot of their workers aren’t the type to decide it’s worth fighting this.
It’s working now…weird that it wasn’t before. Anyway, it’s not including tips.
Well, it’s a different issue, but I agree that if they were caught violating one aspect of labor law that it’s not that big a stretch that they are in others as well. Of course, a $700k lawsuit should teach them the error of their ways, so I’d be surprised if they are still playing fast and loose, but maybe they are just stupid. Thanks for the links!