• corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    That’s truly inhumane. Even when I was a server - not America - I was paid the same wage as a line cook of similar experience.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        I think diisabled people can already get paid less, if they are receivingstate assistance. I don’t know how it works, but I had a retarded family member who lived in PA and he made like 1.25 an hour, which is still below minimum wage since this was nearly 2 decades ago. I know he received assistance in various ways, but it just seemed wrong.

        • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          You could have phrased it better but this is still true. There are employers who get money from the government who essentially give handicap people busy work and filed trips for a couple bucks per week. There’s even “assembly” roles they can get for like $1/assembly (roles like putting screws in bags).

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      They don’t make less just because they’re paid less by their employer. The minimum wage of how much they actually make is the same.

      And as a result, servers in the US make a lot more than line cooks of similar experience. That wage gap is a source of frustration for cooks.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        And as a result, servers in the US make a lot more than line cooks of similar experience.

        That’s heavily variable on where you work. High end restaurants with more expensive menu items and generous tippers pay better than the Sunday Service Waffle House crowd.

        And different restaurants tip out differently. More egalitarian venues tend to pool tips, so line cooks get a slice of the tip out at the end of the day.

        • booly@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          More egalitarian venues tend to pool tips, so line cooks get a slice of the tip out at the end of the day.

          Federal minimum wage law requires that if front of house tips are pooled to be distributed to kitchen staff (who aren’t traditionally tipped), then front of house must first be paid at least minimum wage pre-tip. So that kind of restaurant, while becoming more popular, isn’t exactly the type of restaurant in the discussion when we talk about servers being paid less than minimum wage before tips.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Sure. All staff must be paid a minimum wage under the federal guidelines. The catch is that tipped income goes to meet that wage obligation, which means they have to get paid to the minimum first under law.

            But (a) wage theft in the US is rampant, with tipped workers routinely being underpaid or shorted by non-compliant management. And (b) even under the guidelines, min wage is a pittance. You can’t survive on $7.25/hr in a normal 40 hr work week.

            So even if employers are compliant (which they’re often not), you’re talking about people trying to live on $14k/year in a country where apartments rents bottom out at the $6-8k/year range in the slums and even the meagerest grocery bills easily run into $4-5k/year range in the wake of inflation. Nevermind utilities, transport, health care, clothing, etc.

            Utterly unsustainable.

        • BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I worked in damn near every type of kitchen, from restaurant to banquet hall to school to what have you. None of them tipped out the kitchen because of the laws and guidelines around all of it. And the one that DID tip out the kitchen, they would only schedule up to 32 hours/week or whatever to avoid paying health insurance benefits, and your pay was $3+ dollars less than competing restaurants in the area an hour because “you’ll make it up in tips.”

          And the tips would’ve been split between all staff, so your share is a lot less than what the servers would get individually. And the entire time you’re going to hear or fight with servers who don’t think its fair they have to split their tips with the kitchen. I’ve heard it: “Why should I? They were my tables and I did all the work?!”

          I even watched a cook one night welcome a server to come back in the kitchen and do his job while he went out and did hers. When she said she didn’t know how to cook, he responded, “Huh… All of us on the line could do your job, right now, but none of you could do ours… And you deserve all the tip money because…” 😂