Private contracts should not trump the law of the land.
They can’t.
Sadly, these contracts appear to be following the law of the land because our laws involving employment are trash.
The US minimum tipped wage is $2.13, with the other $5.12 necessary to meet the $7.25 minimum to come from tips. While the company is required to make up the difference, it isn’t hard for tips to meet that minimum. Some locations probably don’t make up the difference like they should, but the headline is based on the fact that Waffle House operates where the states use the federal minimum.
Like non-disclosure agreements and a bunch of other workplace shenanigans, it seems ridiculous that contracts that have clauses like this but they tend to do it because they have not been invalidated in court. Basically, you can put anything in a contract and the worst that can happen is a judge says “lol, no” because our legal system is stupid and has no protections against malicious contracts.
This says non-tipped work, which is unusual even in the US.
And the line for what is related work (like a bartender washing glasses) and non-related (cleaning bathrooms) combined with how contracts are legal until they aren’t means it is possible the judge could rule in Waffle House’s favor.
And no, it is not unusual for restaurants to have waitstaff do things that don’t fall into the tipped category. They even point that out in the article.
A ton of employment issues like this could be solved by raising the minimum wage and getting rid of tipping culture.
Make arbitration clauses illegal.
Seems like the kind of thing a union could take care of, if any WH employees are reading this thread.
Would be delicious to have the union put forced arbitration in their contract with WH.
Tips would make sense if they were extra instead of “smile for the customer so you can eat this week”.
Why are there still people even accepting to work for such a extremely underpaid job? All of these job positions should be vacant. Surely even a desperate person would see that this isn’t even worth it?
A desperate person is choosing between that and nothing.
But you still inevitably end up starving on the streets with a salary like that. Why bother wasting time at a shitty job for it?
Because the choice is that or nothing I can either eat or not. Most people choose to eat
That wouldn’t be sustainable. You would whither away, and get sick and that’s not even considering other basic expenses for things like clothing and personal hygiene, let alone healthcare. Sooner or later that employee will have to drop out. Anyone accepting to work like this must be desperate enough that anything past short term future isn’t even considered. And yet these people exist.
And hence the point I was trying to make that everyone seems to be missing here given the amount of downvotes. The mind-blowing fact that there are still people willing to work these jobs despite reason shows how badly we can’t rely on self regulation. This level of exploitation is downright slavery.
