Waiters must get the tips we give them
2:02 pm - July 18th 2008
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Throughout my teenage years and early twenties I had many jobs as a waitress, in a number of different restaurants. Sometimes fun, with friendly customers, plenty of staff camaraderie and after-work drinks, other times gruelling with hot hours spent in a nasty uniform trying not to look embarrassed as I handed over another overcooked/overpriced/much delayed by a fight between the chefs, pizza.
Part of what drew me to these jobs was the tips – by smiling, being helpful and pandering to odd food requests I could significantly increase the amount I took home at the end of a ten hour shift thanks to the generosity of some of those I waited on. Lucky, since these jobs usually had pretty low hourly rates.
But I was furious when I realised the last restaurant I worked in not only paid a low hourly rate but actually took money from my tips as a top up to the minimum wage.
It was manifestly unfair, I had worked hard and been rewarded for my efforts What’s more the money had been given in good faith by customers who believed it would go to me, not to directly subsidise my employer and save a large restaurant chain a few quid. But my complaints to management fell on deaf ears – the practice is entirely legal and widespread in the hospitality industry.
Unite the Union have been campaigning against this. The Mirror have been running a ‘Fair Tips Charter’ with Unite, and The Independent have weighed in with their own Fair Tips, Fair Pay campaign.
It’s a good campaign and some of the big restaurant chains have already signed up to the charter, promising that tips will reach the people they are meant for.
But I notice my old employers have yet to put their name to it. Many of the people I worked with were living on very low incomes; they were recent immigrants uncertain of their rights or working mums who could not afford to risk losing their jobs by kicking up a fuss. This is a matter of basic fairness, often affecting vulnerable workers. It is too important to be left to corporate social responsibility alone.
Of course regulation is not always the right way to deal with all employer-employee issues. The government has introduced a right to request flexible working, which acknowledges that organisations just might not be able to accommodate a specific request. There are plenty of circumstances where it is legitimate to refuse.
But the issue of tips is not like that, what legitimate business reason is there for an employer withholding tips from their staff? It’s pretty hard to imagine one; many of my old co-workers were the working poor for whom the deductions were making all the difference to their weekly budgets. If a café or restaurant owner claims that they need to keep their staff’s tips to keep the business afloat, then near-by neighbours who want to do the right thing face unfair competition. I very much doubt there are many from the hospitality industry who want to go on the radio and argue the case for continuing with the status quo.
So let’s change the law and wipe the practice out completely so that all employees get all the money they worked so hard to earn, regardless of how good or bad their employer is.
A move to make this practice illegal would be politically popular too. It taps into the basic sense of fairness and decent treatment that made the minimum wage so popular even amongst those who do not directly benefit from it. It would remind people what a Labour government should be for and of the limits of Cameron’s calls for business and individuals to take responsibility for making Britain fairer without the support of government.
And, like the minimum wage, it is a social justice issue that doesn’t require an expensive taxpayer-funded programme. What’s not to like?
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This article appears in the forthcoming Fabian Review.
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This is a guest post. Jemima is events director at the Fabian Society
· Other posts by Jemima Olchawski
Story Filed Under: Blog ,Economy ,Equality ,Trade Unions
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Reader comments
An economically literate response from another ex-restaurant worker here: http://www.spectator.co.uk/business/trading-floor/837526/waitron-units-and-tips.thtml
Why are waiters in businesses where the employer takes tips to pay for the wage even making any extra effort right now? I don’t disagree that it’s a bad situation that needs rectifying (I disagree wholeheartedly with the piece in the spectator) but if you know that the situation is as such then dissent through not doing the extra smiley stuff is surely a short term way of making a point about how your attitude and personality brings money in for them and thus you need treating fairly?
You could argue that tips are part of the problem, in that they allow employers to pay a low wage on the basis that tips will make it up to, er, a less low wage. I worked in a shop for a while in the 1980s and no one ever gave me a tip, never really understood why some low paid workers are considered tip worthy and others not (London cabbies for example earn £50k a year on average and still expect tips, as do hairdressers, whereas postmen, who earn close to min wages, don’t). Tips are also, in theory at least, taxable income.
What’s particularly annoying in restaurants is when a discretionary “service charge” is added to the bill and will obviously go straight to the owner, not to the waiter/waitress. Service in this country is so poor nowadays that I rarely give a tip anyway.
Yes, absolutely definately. Also, it completely rips off the customer. If all the tip is being used for is topping up wages to make them legal, there is absolutely no reason at all to tip, as the company will make up any shortfall themselves. When a customer tips, he or she expects it to act as an addition to the waiter’s wage and that is what it should be. If not, then tipping will cease altogether.
…what legitimate business reason is there for an employer withholding tips from their staff?
The same reason used by all businessmen – you don’t see the Gas companies putting up the wages of their staff after they’ve raised prices do you?
You don’t work for yourself – you work as their servant, a representative. The bosses get to keep the money earned for them by your labour and decide what share you get out of it. That’s the deal.
Tipping is part of the class war – in a time of revolution – such as Spain in 1936-7 – tipping disappeared. It returned when the bosses re-established control (see Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia):
“Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Señior’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou’, and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos dias’. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy.”
Are you not inclined to name (and shame) your former employer who has yet to sign up to the Fair Tips Charter? Or do you think that not naming them as being a crap employer will somehow make them more inclined to sign up?
The Spectator article is right to make the distinction between a tip and a service charge – logically they are quite different things. However, it is totally wrong on the issue of tips being used to top up wages.
A tip is a private transaction between the customer and the waiter to reward especialy good service. It is totally separate from the employment contract between the waiter and the restaurant owner and there is no reason why the owner should not be bound by the same obligations as any other employer.
A salary is a private transaction between the employer and the employee to pay for services rendered. It is totally separate from the social contract between the employee and the state and there is no reason why the state should not be bound by the same obligations as any other agent.
Your point is?
Is the solution to this (from a consumer pov) not to always tip in cash, direct to the waiter’s hand? Surely the employer doesn’t even know you’ve tipped, then?
Also, having had shop jobs, I had many people TRY to give me tips, especially at Christmas, but was not allowed to have cash on my person behind the till (instant dismissal) and any tips had to go in the till, and I would never see them again. I always told people who tried to tip me in this situation to put the money in the charity box…
As #6, why so coy about naming your previous employer?
“Your point is?”
That by your logic, income tax is illegitimate as well. Which is probably true:)
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