Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
Bill, I love your outrage and willingness to stand up for the workers. I suspect that business interests are trying to save themselves $$ with this proposal and that spending $$ to "convince" (see alternate definition of bribe) the legislature to go along is their plan. I'd love to see a requirement that business which choose this new lower salary will guarantee the state they will use that savings to hire new workers and need to prove it by demonstrating that their labor cost did not go down. After all we all know that decreasing costs to businesses will increase jobs they can offer.
The proposed bill has an interesting catch. I'm not sure how it would play out in the real world. Under present law the server must be directly paid the Florida Minimum wage for tipped employees of 4.65/hr as there is a presumption of an additional 3.02/hr in tips making the total 7.67/hr which is Florida Minimum Wage. Thus the owner is paying 4.65 and the server is only guaranteed 7.67
The bill changes it to the owner having an option of paying a lower salary of the Federal Minimum wage for tipped employees which is 2.13/hr but the owner must guarantee that the total salary + tips equals 130% of Florida minimum wage, or 7.67 x1.3 = 9.98/hr If the tips do not give the server enough the owner must make up the difference. And they have to elect which salary structure they want a year at a time. So the real issue here is whether the average server makes at least 6.86/hr in tips. The irony of it all is that is you work at a busier/pricier restaurant where your tips are higher, the owner can get away with directly paying you less but the server can be sure of getting 9.98. Whereas at a lower cost lower tips place the owner won't want to take a risk on being liable for the extra money and he will choose to go with the old system where the server can only be sure of 7.67/hr. Full analysis is at http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill...210.pre.cm.PDF
Sorry for the long post |
The "long post" helped understand what they're doing. Further proof that they cannot keep their power-grubbing, politicking hands out of ANYTHING!!!! They have to have power over every single thing that goes on....and that's why our governments aren't worth a SH**.