We dug into how American tipping culture got so broken, and the fight to fix it.
It turns out that your tips are subsidizing the payrolls of multi-billion dollar chains, while they pay their workers under minimum wage.
It’s a system rooted in slavery, and pushed by a wealthy restaurant owners onto the rest of us.
But there’s a growing movement to change it.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/national-restaurant-assn/summary?&id=D000000150&topnumcycle=A speaks for itself.
Fifty seven million over 22 years is pretty tame. Especially considering that the National Restaurant Association has forty thousand members. It would have only taken about seventy dollars a year per member to get to that total.
First of all, OpenSecrets only list public money as dark money is by definition not known. Secondly, they literally have the best deal possible so they have no reason to spend more money now. They are the only sector that has an exemption from minimum wage laws.
Whatever way you may want to present it they have enough money to pay fair wages. And if they didn’t they should close as not viable business venture.