An employer here in Australia would quickly find themselves slugged with hefty fines and even court proceedings if they were caught not paying award wages. Americans call themselves leaders of the free world, yet elements of their society are so poorly run, that some second and third world nations outperform them
An employer in America would also find themselves in some trouble if they weren't paying their staff minimum wage. Which is between $7-16/hr depending on the state.
According to Glassdoor, the median total pay for a server in the United States in 2024 is $70,000 per year, with a range of $53,000–$94,000. This includes an average salary of $41,770 and an estimated additional pay of $28,091 per year. Additional pay can include cash bonuses, commission, tips, and profit sharing.
Oh my god, only 70k a year? How will the servers survive?!? They would only be in the top 25 percent of earners in Australia! Oh the humanity!
See, you may have a point, but then again, you don’t. Having been a waiter I would never, ever ask to be moved to a salary or standardized pay range. I used to make so much fucking money hustling my tips. 300, 400+ a night was totally possible (worked in high end dining). And that might only be for like 6 hours of work. So sure, there’s risk, like people not tipping, but there’s reward, too.
It's because of the restaurant owners. Servers are not lobbying legislatures to keep the current tipping system. That's entirely done by restaurant owners who want to keep their labor costs down.
Servers are important party in this discussion. Their payroll is the one that gets affected the most if we were to change their pay structure. Business has little incentive to make change, it’s a “working” model that reduce risk as business owner.
The thing is, servers are not interested to change this, hence nothing changes simply because the most important party has no interest to change the status quo.
The vast majority of servers in the US make barely above minimum wage with no benefits. A few vocal minority servers who make strong income in the system do want to keep it. They are not significantly lobbying for keeping it. Meanwhile almost every restaurant owner is working on legislators to protect the tip credit system, through orgs like the RAA for example.
The thing is, this benefits all restaurant owners and only a small handful of servers. Some servers are absolutely interested in changing the system, and to paint them all as one group who supports the tip credit system is silly. Restaurant owners are the main driving force behind keeping the tip credit system.
As a former waiter who also made good income doing the job, I wholly disagree. The tipping system is fucked and while a few top end waiters make good money, the average server in the US makes barely above minimum wage and has no benefits.
Serving is almost a perfect microcosm of the US income spectrum. The vast majority are barely above minimum, while a small handful are making multiples of that income and defending an obviously broken system that worked out for them.
Using an Apple or Android OS, run by an intel chip, and a dozen other US-engineered components, making comments on Reddit, complaining about how bad the US is run. PSA, nobody here ever says/feels we are the leaders of the free world. But I can understand why it must feel like that... you're using all our gear. When is Australia gunna make some cool shit?
If profits are all you care about then yes they probably are among the most successful, but if you give even the slightest shit about the people that work in that business then you are far behind. But hey, who gives a fuck about workers , right.
Of the top 100 companies ranked by average employee salary, about 90% of them are US companies. Yes Apple, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, NVIDIA, etc. care about profits. But they also pay extremely well, and at the end of the day that's totally fine - I don't need my company to "care about me". But hey, enjoy your team building exercises.
yes some of your businesses, very few in broad scheme of things. america is cool if you have money, otherwise its a shit country to live in. poor infrastructure, healthcare, politics...america is cool to make vacation there, ive been over there a few times and i enjoyed it, but i would never want to live there, simply because the average quality of life is so weak over there.
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u/Heavy_Bicycle6524 Aug 28 '24
An employer here in Australia would quickly find themselves slugged with hefty fines and even court proceedings if they were caught not paying award wages. Americans call themselves leaders of the free world, yet elements of their society are so poorly run, that some second and third world nations outperform them