Restaurant workers salaries
 

S.B. 7210 passed the Florida senate and heading to the house.

Tampa based OSI partners ( Carrabas, Bonefish, Outback ) got the Senate to draft a bill to lower the minimum wage for restaurant workers who make tips from $4.65 to $2.13 per hour, They don't get any benifits, have to pay for their own health care, many are single parents ..... WHAT!.....IS IT JUST ME!!!!!!!!!!! So OSI Partners gave $130,000. to a few dozen republican senators to sell out some of the lowest paid and hardest working members of our community. Shameful.....................Shameful. If you think its hard to find decent servers now just see what you get if this bill passes!! Next time people feel like beating up on unions remember this is why we have them! These hard working young men and women have no one to represent them, if these establishments could pay them nothing they would! So now I think as a restaurant goer, OK, I guess we will see our menu prices go down.........YEAH RIGHT.

So now I'll take a few hours tracking down email addresses of the supporting restaurants and names of restaurants who don't support this bill.

In the interest of complete disclosure I worked many years in the restaurant business, am a union member ( not restaurant) and was a small business owner.

Florida House of Representatives - Representatives

Senators - The Florida Senate

Links to contact our " esteemed" Representatives and senators

I read this in The Daily Sun and I couldn't believe what I was reading.

All the more reason to tip well. I appreciate the good service found in so many of our restaurants. The service is sometimes better than the food and I am thinking of places like Toojays, Cane Garden, Mallory and Glenview. Thank you servers. That is hard work that is much appreciated.

This legislation needs to be reversed!

It's a little more nuanced
 

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

Let's try to keep the discussion as non political as possible and focus on the issue of restaurant wages. If the discussion strays too far, it may be headed for the subscriber only political forum.

So far, so good....

I'd like to tip as a show of appreciation for exceptional service (common elsewhere in the world). How did we get to the point that we're forced to kick in for basic wages? Shouldn't that be built into the cost? It seems to me that this just allows establishments to lower prices by exploiting the staff. It's really unfair, all too often the quality of the service has nothing to do with the server and is entirely out of their control.

Good read
 

Maybe one of the reasons I'm a little more sensitive with this subject is that i'm reading Ken Follett's new book " Fall Of Giants". We tend to forget where we came from and how we ended up in The Villages. Everyone should be reminded on how difficult it was for the working class in the late 1800's and early 1900's. This behavior by the restaurant industry should be a rude awakening for all of us!

Moderator, Maybe this should be posted on the political forum also but it is still a restaurant issue. I'm getting in touch with all our local politicians, Democrat or Republican, doesn't matter, I'm a registered Independent. Also the parent companies of as many restaurant chains that I can find and register my shock!

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**.

Thanks for defending the tipped servers, etc., but unionizing them is NOT the answer!!!

All that does is confiscate MORE of the pathetic $4.67/hr they get now, for forced union dues that will not be used to defend the living wage, but WILL be used to pay for campaigns of politicians interested only in their own re-election and self-preservation.

We need to let Outback, Carrabas, Bonefish and the other companies supporting this know that they WILL earn themselves a giant boycott if they keep this up.

As a union supporter I say good luck on getting any 2 people to agree on anything....How many people have you heard saying we need good paying jobs in this country and go to wal-mart or a car dealership and buy a foreign product,,,I truely believe people will do what is good for them in the now and don.t care about someone elses problem...After all they had there problems when they were young and now its someone elses problem. GOOD LUCK !

One thing to remember is that servers have to "tip back" other employees -- the busboy, the hostess, the expediter, some even the bartender (who usually makes more in tips than the servers) and manager. Thus, that $7.67 becomes even less since another 10% minimum goes to others. There is something patently wrong with someone barely making minimum wage (if that) having to help pay the salaries of others.

When I was a server in high school and college, all tips were ours. If we wanted to give the busboy some extra money because of extra help, we did so as a choice, not a requirement. Also, we were able to decide how much to declare on taxes for tips. Did we cheat? Of course we did but it was the only way to get a decent wage. Today, the IRS takes an automatic 18% out for tips, based on meal tickets, not on the actual tips received. For every Gracie, there are three who think 10% is a great tip.

I've never been a big fan of unions but I can see the reasoning about having them for servers. Those in truly high-end restaurants are not going to want a union in. Those in the chain restaurants and mom and pop types might. However, are we willing to pay the higher prices for eating out this would require? There is no question who would be footing the bill?

When our girls would work as servers they would have to go in early and stay later to do "side work". This is rolling silver, slicing lemons, refilling salt/pepper etc. While doing these duties, they were on the clock, way below minimum wage. I never thought that was fair.

Gracie I totally agree with you.
Suzanne