McDonald’s is criticizing the restaurant industry for allowing tipped wages, which let managers pay servers less than the minimum wage as long as customer tips make up the difference.

Kempczinski also noted that in many states, sit-down restaurants are allowed to pay servers as little as $2.13 per hour, a federal minimum set in 1991, with tips making up the rest of their pay.

“So right now, there’s an uneven playing field. If you are a restaurant that allows tips or has tips as part of your equation, you’re essentially getting the customer to pay for your labor and you’re getting an extra benefit from no taxes on tips,” Kempczinski said.

  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
    52·
    4 days ago

    I was going to write out a whole spiel that hardly anybody would read to completion, then realized I could simplify it so easily: The audacity of these McBitches.

      • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
        2·
        4 days ago

        Again, I had written a long wall of text, trying to touch on all the points before I decided to simply. I won’t be rewriting it all, but the main points are:

        1. If McD’s wanted servers, they can have them and then they would get any supposed benefits of having wait staff. 2. If there was so much as a penny extra profit to be made from this, McDs would be doing it. You’d have to be willfully ignorant to believe otherwise. 3. Servers make federal minimum wage (not the $2 quoted) at a minimum. Yes, bad/illegal bosses exist, but that’s a separate issue. If they don’t make up for the deficit with tips, the business is on the hook for making up the difference. The truth is though, it’s rarely needed because they tend to make pretty decent money via the tips. 4. Whether customers pay the employees directly (via tips) or indirectly, they’re still paying. The employers like McDs are not charities that are literally giving away free employee work, they’re building that cost into the products and services they offer, which are then paid by customers. 5. And this is the biggest one: Large corporations and ultra wealthy literally make a sport out of shirking their tax responsibilities, so given all the other points are basically moot, the sheer audacity of making an argument about taxes benefits for small businesses and workers is something else.

        And to be clear, I’m not advocating for tipping culture or tip-based wages, since a lot of people (not necessarily you) seem to have reading comprehension problems.