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Minimum wages and universal basic income
#16
(04-16-2020, 01:12 PM)jamincan Wrote: I think I got confused with the Liberal opposition to the GST and then later keeping it on. Regardless, a UBI would be a good policy to come out of this, if it does.

You may be forgiven for being confused by the ever-changing promises made during election campaigns. It doesn’t help that after the Liberals didn’t cancel it, the Conservatives (who first introduced it) then reduced the rate.
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#17
(04-16-2020, 06:35 PM)plam Wrote: That specific category is kind of surprising but I've heard that, in the US, wilderness guide wages are quite paltry (like other categories they basically depend on tips).

This is why I don’t like minimum wage policies. Nobody really believes in a minimum wage. There always end up being certain jobs and people that are allowed to be paid less. Which leads to weird situations like certain jobs that can only be done by teenagers, for example (because adults would have to be paid much more), or the sort-of requirement to tip (I mean, not tipping at all is basically theft, but completely legal, which is an absolutely bonkers category to exist in a country that supposedly obeys rules of law), which then leads to silliness in the tax code, not to mention no end of argument over how tips are handled by management.
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#18
(04-16-2020, 08:52 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(04-16-2020, 06:35 PM)plam Wrote: That specific category is kind of surprising but I've heard that, in the US, wilderness guide wages are quite paltry (like other categories they basically depend on tips).

This is why I don’t like minimum wage policies. Nobody really believes in a minimum wage. There always end up being certain jobs and people that are allowed to be paid less. Which leads to weird situations like certain jobs that can only be done by teenagers, for example (because adults would have to be paid much more), or the sort-of requirement to tip (I mean, not tipping at all is basically theft, but completely legal, which is an absolutely bonkers category to exist in a country that supposedly obeys rules of law), which then leads to silliness in the tax code, not to mention no end of argument over how tips are handled by management.

You may be overstating it ...
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#19
(04-16-2020, 08:52 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: This is why I don’t like minimum wage policies. Nobody really believes in a minimum wage. There always end up being certain jobs and people that are allowed to be paid less.

In the case we were discussing, LTC workers, the point was to ensure that they got paid more than the general minimum wage, not less. And that the minimum wage legislation could be used to achieve that goal.
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#20
(04-16-2020, 09:34 PM)panamaniac Wrote: You may be overstating it ...

All I mean is that it really isn’t OK to not tip at a restaurant. It goes beyond being slightly impolite.

But as far as I know it is perfectly legal.

It would be different if the normal tip was 0, but there was a tradition of rewarding service that goes above and beyond by giving some extra to the server. I would be fine with that.

It would also be OK for it to be normal for the price of a restaurant meal to be $X + Y%, as long as it was clearly written on the menu and doing so legally obligated the restaurant to pay all of the Y% to the staff. It’s actually perfectly reasonable for pay to vary up and down with traffic, as long as that is agreed to up front by all concerned.
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#21
(04-16-2020, 09:49 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(04-16-2020, 08:52 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: This is why I don’t like minimum wage policies. Nobody really believes in a minimum wage. There always end up being certain jobs and people that are allowed to be paid less.

In the case we were discussing, LTC workers, the point was to ensure that they got paid more than the general minimum wage, not less. And that the minimum wage legislation could be used to achieve that goal.

Some workers more, some less. This is called micromanagement and is no way to run an economy. All workers need sufficient bargaining power that labour markets can operate properly.
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#22
(04-16-2020, 10:56 AM)jamincan Wrote: Effectively the CERB is a guaranteed basic income and I'm hoping that as the government expands eligibility they realize that this is a good idea and it becomes a permanent universal policy. GST was only supposed to be a temporary measure, after all.


Interesting that this was one of Andrew Yang's proposal for presidency:

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/
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#23
An employees should not feel entitled to tip though if they provide poor service. The whole point of gratuity is that the employee DOES have the bargaining power. The server provides an above average experience and they get an above average tip. I worked in hospitality albeit a long time ago...
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#24
(04-17-2020, 08:12 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: An employees should not feel entitled to tip though if they provide poor service.  The whole point of gratuity is that the employee DOES have the bargaining power.  The server provides an above average experience and they get an above average tip.  I worked in hospitality albeit a long time ago...

With the way tips work in restaurants now, service poor enough to warrant no tip is service that should lead the customer to complain to management. Simply not tipping sends a very unclear signal which isn’t really distinguishable from the customer just being a nasty jerk.

If the normal tip was 0, it would be different. Or maybe I should say normal optional tip, since there is always the possibility of the official price schedule including a certain extra percentage dedicated to the servers.
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#25
The example of wilderness guides is actually a useful one here. A restaurant server not being tipped in one instance maybe loses $10-20, maybe more, maybe less. Overall, though, it's not that significant and so it's easy to discount the loss of income. A wilderness guide, however, is typically tipped between 10-20% of the trip cost which can be in the thousands. Black Feather is a well-regarded backcountry tour provider. Their two week traverse of Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island is $6,100 per person. One person who decides to not tip legally can do so (unless the contract stipulates otherwise, I don't know), and would be depriving the guide anywhere from $610-1220 of income for two weeks work. Imagine if you have $1200-2400 of your monthly salary left to the whim of your employer?
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#26
Are the wilderness guide tips that high? How many customers are there per guide? I have more experience with tipping dive masters; there you might tip a flat $10 per person regardless of the actual dive cost (depending on where this is).

Maybe I should move this to its own thread ...
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#27
(04-15-2020, 05:27 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(04-15-2020, 04:14 PM)ac3r Wrote: If these privately operated paid their staff more money, they wouldn't be forced to be working multiple jobs. They easily could, too, because these places rake in money as it costs a lot to be able to live in one. Unfortunately, low wages have resulted in workers juggling two or more jobs to pay the bills and that has resulted in so much death from Covid-19.

Do you happen to know what are typical hours? I mean are they working 2 or 3 jobs at 15 hours each to get something like full time, or are they basically working multiple full-time jobs?

I don't work in the field, so I don't really know for sure. I'd guess most work 20-30 hours per job like most part time gigs out there.
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#28
(04-17-2020, 09:37 AM)tomh009 Wrote: Are the wilderness guide tips that high? How many customers are there per guide? I have more experience with tipping dive masters; there you might tip a flat $10 per person regardless of the actual dive cost (depending on where this is).

Maybe I should move this to its own thread ...

Yes.
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#29
Black Feather might have a recommended tip for their clients which is lower - I'm not sure. A hiking trip to Auyuittuq is going to be on the higher end of a trip cost and therefore higher end for tips. For most wilderness/hunting/fishing guides, though, tips definitely would be in the hundreds of dollars depending on the length of time.
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#30
(04-17-2020, 08:12 AM)Rainrider22 Wrote: An employees should not feel entitled to tip though if they provide poor service.  The whole point of gratuity is that the employee DOES have the bargaining power.  The server provides an above average experience and they get an above average tip.  I worked in hospitality albeit a long time ago...

I don't think I've ever had service in a restaurant in K-W that I considered "above average".  On the other hand, I've not had many bad service experiences either.  That said, I'm probably a below average tipper - usually 15% on the cost of the food (only), plus a buck or two if they opened a bottle of wine.
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