Tipped restaurant and bar workers in Chicago will make $15.80 per hour through raises over the next few years as subminimum wages are banned.
It should have been $15/hr 20 years ago.
Will tips still be included though? Or are they eliminating tips?
Washington State changed the minimum wage years ago and mandated it to include tipped workers. It didn’t really change the tipping, but the tips still went to the staff, so at least the workers got a more livable income out of the deal.
Tips would probably go to the company. They’ll get their’s no matter what.
Pretty sure a tip intended for an employee going to the employer is illegal. Employers cannot keep tips.
This is true, in Illinois. However, restaurants can do whatever they like with “service charges”, though customarily those go to the service staff. Automatic gratuity is already illegal in Illinois, or at least illegal to enforce, so a lot of restaurants already apply a service charge on large parties… easy enough, and perfectly legal, to expand that and claim it as revenue.
And that’s just the legal route. Wage theft is rampant in this industry, at least in Chicago.
Source: Am current server in Chicago for over decade.
You think the law will stop them?
The NLRB loves cases like this
That would be illegal.
Tips will be mostly irrelevant once patrons are not shamed and manipulated into paying tips. If the salaries are already paid, most people will not tip.
Tips finally got to a breaking point in the US and they’re on the way out for good.
Currently the subminimum wage in Chicago ranges from $9 to $9.48 an hour plus tips.
Restaurant servers and other tipped workers are paid a “subminimum wage” which acts as a base pay and is bolstered by tips.
Chicago does tips on top of the wage. That hasn’t changed. So that might mean eliminating tips to some patrons.
Watch, the companies will still try to confisticate the tips though
Nice. always struck me as insane when i heard that waiters in the US were expected to make money from tips and were paid almost nothing
This is how it always should be. There is no good reason for employers to pay less if someone makes tips. It is stealing…whatever the law says.
Yeah we had this in the UK for a time when minimum wage was introduced. Up until about 2008-2009 when it was finally changed so that employees had to have minimum wage regardless of tips the hospitality industry didn’t collapse despite the noise made in the right wing press.
However we now have issues with employers stealing tips from employees via various dodgy practices. The law is likely to change again here to protect tips too.
Chicago are making a step in the right direction but employees will still lose out of tips aren’t protected too
I (almost) always tip in cash. I hope this lowers the chance that an employer can intercept it.
When I started learning about 7i it blew my mind being from the West Coast. Incredibly horrific piece of law.
