At $16 an hour, you’d have to work 112.5 hours a week to be able to afford rent.
That made me nauseous
This is America.
Finally increasing it to the right number, from 15 years ago.
What’s the right number? This is NY CITY, which is a pretty high cost of living. The “right number” should be higher than most places
The average rent in NYC is $4300, a worker making $16hr would need to work 268 hours a month, to just cover rent.
Suppose I employ a cashier at my sandwich shop. The register has a screen which solicits a tip from the customer while they’re paying. Am I compelled by law to pay any of my workers minimum wage or do I employ tipped workers which can be compensated at a reduced rate?
in New York City, $13.35 for service employees and $10.65 for food service workers—as long as the employee’s earned tips make up the difference, an amount known as the tip credit.
So from your hypothetical I guess as long as you have them make a sandwich every now and again you could go as low as $10.65/hr
But unfortunately for you and fortunately for everyone else if after the tips are counted and added for the hours worked, it doesn’t add up to the ~$16/hr minimum the company does actually legally need pay up to cover the difference.
I think it’s actually a pretty clever way to do it and as long as it’s being applied correctly, is a great way to keep some of those high tipping jobs that people fight against getting rid of tipping through completely guaranteed pay but then again it would probably not matter at those places if the servers were still making more base pay.
