People self-reporting crap on the internet is not a cite.
Agreed. It’s a different issue. They also just got nailed with an even bigger lawsuit on a different issue just this March.
https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/3-31-17.cfm
Beyond that, it does strike me as being not terribly difficult to believe that if they’re constantly having to pay the difference they’ll just let the person go for poor performance and not fight it when the person collects.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that your statement is true–that some people will be fired for poor performance.
Isn’t that the business’ prerogative?
Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t know there was such a rule.
Would you agree that them getting nailed on multiple occasions for violations of federal labor law is pretty compelling evidence that they’re willing to violate federal labor law?
Yes. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. I never said they businesses shouldn’t be allowed to.
No, it’s not a rule of the SDMB, but it is a standard in a debate. Was the “cite” edited, fact-checked, peer reviewed, or anything?
Or is it just a bunch of random people on the internet giving their opinions?
You do know what they say about opinions, right?
This is the point where you needed to stick around for Econ 102, where they discuss how workers who earn more money can spend that money at local businesses, increasing revenues. Then in Econ 201, they discuss how businesses can move to and from areas based on the impact of underlying law - businesses who are not helped by higher MW can move out of Seattle, while businesses who are helped can move in. Businesses moving can impact rent and the availability of profits in certain sectors.
The economy is a web of interrelated groups from landlords to suppliers, businesses, workers and customers. NONE OF IT IS SIMPLE.
And you, in turn, should have stuck around for Econ 103, where they talk about the various choices that people make with their money. You’ve fallen for the “broken window” fallacy.
You see, people don’t magically increase their spending at locally-owned business. Many millions of people have debt that they’re trying to get rid of, and some of that extra money is going to go there. Another large chunk (especially these days) is going to go to out-of-state companies, such as Amazon or other online retailers.
Furthermore, you’ve totally missed the negative effects on the economy from the business owner’s perspective. What if he was planning to buy new equipment with his profits? And now that a large chunk of those profits are going to his employees, he no longer has the money to patronize his local supplier, and that loss of business hurts the local economy. Maybe the supplier now has to lay off a few employees because HIS business is drying up.
I came in to bump this thread anyway, because of the news from St. Louis.
So now we’re going to get a real-time experiment going the other way. Contrary to the apocalyptic hand-wringing by liberals, I predict that there will be few or no negative effects.
I’m not saying that it’s inherently a net economic good for MW to increase, I’m saying it’s complicated, there are a million moving parts to account for. Some people do better, some people do worse. The claim in the OP is that the people its intended to help actually do worse. That’s a bold claim, one that is plausible, but not necessarily proven.
The goal of increasing the MW is to help people making MW, if that’s at the expense of business owners and results in a small inefficiencies market wide, proponents of a high MW would likely be OK with that.
I’ll suggest that folks whose wages are going from $10 to $7.70 will report negative effects. I’ll also suggest that it’s literally impossible for those folks to NOT experience negative effects.
You keep adding more evidence of your lack of understanding with every post you make.
Why do you seem to think that wages are exempt from the laws of supply and demand? Labor is just like anything else–when the supply shrinks beyond a certain point, the price of it rises.
The unemployment rate in St. Louis for May was 4.2%.
That means that (A), most people who want a job have one; and (B), some companies are having at least minor difficulty filling open spots. There are “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs in many places.
Last year, both Target and Walmart raised their “internal” minimum wage to $10.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-target-wages-exclusive-idUSKCN0XF2L4
When companies like that do that sort of thing, you can be sure that they do it in order to compete better in the labor supply market. They wouldn’t be doing it unless they were having difficulty or afraid of having difficulty in hiring or retaining people.
Any attempt to lower wages of current employees to the federal minimum will backfire very, very quickly. They can apply to another company and in many cases get another job almost instantly. You can be absolutely certain that at least 99% of employers are very aware of that.
Flyer, WRT supply and demand, you are implying that the good people of STL set their MW at $10, which just so happens to be exactly the market driven MW for STL, thus the new law won’t actually impact any workers negatively.
But I think the argument is people will be fired for reporting to their company that they are not making minimum wage via tips and that the company needs to make up the difference.
Is there any evidence to support that argument, or just anecdotes?
Here is the Federal Law (with some state breakdowns) for minimum wage for Tipped Employees:
As you can see, the minimum wage at the Federal Level for a tipped employee is $2.13 per hour.
The rest is made up in tips. MEASURING that amount is challenging. Luckily for folks running bars and restaurants, the IRS gives a guideline:
“As an employer, you must ensure that the total tip income reported to you during any pay period is, at a minimum, equal to 8% of your total receipts for that period.”
So the assumption by the employer is that every check comes with an 8% tip, and the employee is taxed based on that assumption. Whether or not MORE is collected in tips should be assumed, but is rarely documented.
Just thought I would add a couple of government cites here on minimum wage, tipping, tracking, etc.
In the very first row in the very first column, labeled Basic Combined Cash & Tip Minimum Wage Rate, it is clear that the minimum wage is $7.25 under the FLSA.
Yes, but in a world of cash tips, knowing whether or not they make this is a key question. I have been a waiter and bartended, and I made far more than that when I counted my tips at the end of the night.
The company withheld payroll and income taxes based on an assumed 8% tip rate on all of my tables, so that is what shows up in any official measurements.
So the $7.25 is the minimum you supposedly get, including tips. If you can’t pull down an extra $5.12 in tips per hour - then you are either a terrible waiter, or you have the worst possible shift on the planet.
This claim is false for the city that is the topic of this thread. There is no separate rule for tipped workers under Seattle’s minimum wage rule (or in the State of Washington, for that matter.) Workers within the city of Seattle have the same wage requirements whether they are tipped or not, and the same is true throughout the State of Washington for its lower $11 minimum wage.
The primary exception for the Washington State minimum wage is for workers aged 14 or 15, but that’s orthogonal to the tipped issue.
Nah. There aren’t any Texas Roadhouses in the city of Seattle, but if you went to one within the State of Washington you might learn that that state law requires them to be paid $11 per hour rather than only ten, as well as requiring that they can keep tips.
I cannot guess whether or not they would laugh their asses off at you.
You appear to be conflating the terms “earnings” and “pay.” I won’t say that doing so is unjustified, but if your interlocutor distinguishes them instead, then the two of you aren’t really having the same conversation.