Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Elections - City Councils and Commissions - Policies
bivaly
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby bivaly » March 23rd, 2017, 4:13 pm

There is no indication on the ballot which candidate was endorsed by the DFL. Each candidate gets to select the three words next to their name - most people end up writing Democratic Farmer Labor.

Blaisdell Greenway
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Blaisdell Greenway » March 23rd, 2017, 7:54 pm

There is no indication on the ballot which candidate was endorsed by the DFL. Each candidate gets to select the three words next to their name - most people end up writing Democratic Farmer Labor.
Correct. But the party itself has the ability to raise and spend more money on campaigns than any individual could. You only need to find a few hundred votes to win the endorsement, which comes with benefits such as mailers with your name on it sent to every registered voter in the city. This is especially critical for races like Park Board and Board of Estimate and Taxation, which your average voter is unaware of.

You should ESPECIALLY caucus if you live in a safe ward like 2, 8, 10, or 12. Sign up to be a delegate to the city convention and be one of those few hundred people in a room that decides the next mayor and park board (all 9 seats). The city DFL party is just volunteers holding together parliamentary infrastructure. They are only biased towards whoever's more organized. It's waiting for us to take it over.

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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby EOst » March 23rd, 2017, 9:05 pm

There is no indication on the ballot which candidate was endorsed by the DFL. Each candidate gets to select the three words next to their name - most people end up writing Democratic Farmer Labor.
Oops. Thanks!
The city DFL party is just volunteers holding together parliamentary infrastructure. They are only biased towards whoever's more organized. It's waiting for us to take it over.
*whisper* so are neighborhood organizations */whisper*

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Nick
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Nick » May 5th, 2017, 4:23 pm

^lol
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MNdible
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby MNdible » May 5th, 2017, 4:40 pm

It's funny because it's true.

mattaudio
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby mattaudio » May 22nd, 2017, 11:20 am

Northbound Brewpub owner: If you don't want a tip credit, we don't want your business
http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/no ... /423623933

Chef
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Chef » May 22nd, 2017, 1:03 pm

There are a ton of servers who are opposed to raising minimum wage without a tip credit. The figure (and probably correctly) that a $15hr minimum wage for servers will probably drive restaurants to get rid of table service (and servers) or move to the service included/no tipping model. A lot of lifer servers are seeing this as an existential threat. Given that servers in the Twin Cities make in the neighborhood of $29hr with tips currently (median) many of them will have a hard time finding jobs that pay as well if tipped servers become a thing of the past.

This Facebook group has a lot of chatter about it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4611991 ... 5462765330

amiller92
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby amiller92 » May 22nd, 2017, 1:07 pm

I do not even understand his quotes in there, although I take him at his word that he's concerned about the well-being of his servers.

Like, literally, what does this even mean:
Robinson says moving the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour without a tip credit would mean servers and bartenders would earn something like $28 an hour, though cooks and other non-tipped employees would have to wait for their own wages to gradually reach the $15 level.
The $15 wage will be phased in for servers and non-servers at the same time. Is this literally "servers make more" so they don't need a minimum wage?
Robinson, for his part, says he could "squeeze by for one year" with minimal changes to his business, but after that would need to add a "service fee" to menu items.
You mean you'll have to raise your prices a little (but you'd like to do it in the most obnoxious way possible). Okay. That's fine.

I get that the current system (no tip "credit") shifts risk from employees to the employer, who now has to front the full minimum wage instead of hoping that customers will cover part of it directly. I get that someone like Robinson, who employers servers, is wary of that.

What I don't get is:
"The way I feel about it is, if you're fighting against the livelihood of my servers, you're not welcome in my brewpub," he says. "That may not be a popular view. I don't want customers who want to destroy my servers' income."
Again, what does this even mean? The Pathway to 15 People (https://www.pathwayto15.org/ Edited wrong link) argue that a lot of severs are already making more than $15. If that's right, anyone already there loses nothing by this.

Which is probably why that website doesn't argue that it will "destroy servers' income" but rather that business won't be able to hire as many people if labor costs more. That's a coherent argument against minimum wages (although not necessarily an assertion that's held up to empirical analysis), but has nothing to do with tip "credits."

So what the heck is Robinson talking about? Is this, "it's going to end tipping?" Because it's not. Or at least not unless Robinson and close to all of his competitors decide to end it, which they aren't going to do.
Last edited by amiller92 on May 22nd, 2017, 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

amiller92
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby amiller92 » May 22nd, 2017, 1:10 pm

There are a ton of servers who are opposed to raising minimum wage without a tip credit. The figure (and probably correctly) that a $15hr minimum wage for servers will probably drive restaurants to get rid of table service (and servers) or move to the service included/no tipping model. A lot of lifer servers are seeing this as an existential threat. Given that servers in the Twin Cities make in the neighborhood of $29hr with tips currently (median) many of them will have a hard time finding jobs that pay as well if tipped servers become a thing of the past.

This Facebook group has a lot of chatter about it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4611991 ... 5462765330
Okay, but a handful of high-end restaurants have tried to get rid of tipping and failed completely. And the only way that service included/no tipping happens is if business owners like Robinson collectively decide to do it.

Chef
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Chef » May 22nd, 2017, 1:20 pm

I would add that in my experience of managing kitchens, minimum wage increases for the servers are actually regressive in consequences even though they look progressive on paper. Usually they come out of the pockets of the kitchen staff in the form of fewer raises, so what happens is that the highest paid people in the restaurant (the servers) get a raise while the lowest paid (kitchen staff) don't, because the restaurant has to pay for server raises.

A point to ponder from a recent article on the nationwide cook shortage (and this issue is exacerbated in MN by the lack of a tip credit):
Now, the low base-pay might not matter to the front of the house staff, which works almost exclusively on tips and has -- over the last 30 years -- seen their wages increase 200%. But the back of the house rely mainly on their hourly wages, and those have only gone up 25% over the same time, creating a discrepancy that would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. “I was getting paid more in Australia as a dishwasher than I ever was in the United States as a sous chef,” says Daven Hassell, 29, a former sous at Domenica in New Orleans, who spent a year working as a dishwasher and cook down under. Meanwhile, American customers are led to believe they’re already paying a pretty penny even though those tips are only creating financial solvency for the ex-theater majors in the front and not the ambitious lifers in the back.

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/ho ... ts-pricier

amiller92
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby amiller92 » May 22nd, 2017, 1:30 pm

Obviously, you have a familiarity with the business that I lack, but a shortage of cooks sure sounds like upward pressure on wages for cooks.

Scrolling through that Facebook group is interesting. There's at least a post or two suggesting concern that the back of the house will benefit at the expense of servers.

And Robinson makes his thoughts more explicit:
The unions and politicians know what they are doing. They are not stupid. It's not difficult to figure out that the 15 Now plan forces raises to $28/hr servers for *four* years before $13/hr cooks see a dime. Unions and politicians *know* restaurants will have to move away from the tip model. They simply don't like how servers earn their money.
I guess I've not followed it close enough to know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that middle sentence does not reflect what's actually been proposed locally (maybe it's the national 15 Now position??).

I guess I've never heard any politicians say they have a problem with tipping. Maybe the unions do?

Not specifically on-point, but it's probably worth being skeptical of anyone predicting the effects of minimum wages with certainty: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... -ambiguity

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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Chef » May 22nd, 2017, 1:32 pm

For most restaurants, this would wipe out their entire profit margin. People on the left in Minneapolis (and I am one) tend to think that all business owners are crooked and just have a pile of money to play with but that just isn't the case. They don't always have a money tree that they can just shake an magically be able to pay for things like this.

People have this perception that servers are struggling proletarians but actually it is a very lucrative job. At the last place I ran, our full time servers made $65k to $80k a year which was more than everybody else in the restaurant including the entire management team. It is normal for servers to make more than the head chef despite the fact that they work little more than half as many hours. Giving people like that a raise is not the point of raising minimum wage. The intention of a minimum wage is to protect the people on the bottom of the pay scale rather than the top. Raising minimum wage without a tip credit has the opposite impact.

Chef
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Chef » May 22nd, 2017, 1:43 pm

Obviously, you have a familiarity with the business that I lack, but a shortage of cooks sure sounds like upward pressure on wages for cooks.
There has been a little bit of upward pressure but not as much as you would think. Kitchen wages have gone up, but in inflation adjusted terms they are still well below where they were in 1999. A lot of places are just choosing to operate their kitchens short staffed. Operators feel that they don't have much room to raise prices.

I guess I've never heard any politicians say they have a problem with tipping. Maybe the unions do?

Unions dislike tipping because it makes it very difficult for them to unionize restaurants. Unions can't really offer servers anything better than what they are already getting, so the front of the house almost always votes against unionization. Because there are more front of the house than back of the house employees, restaurant unionization drives almost always fail. Because of this, unions want to see an end to the tipping because it would allow them to unionize the industry. Politicians who rely on union support tend to follow their lead.

The subtext here, which is the union hope and server fear, is that a $15hr minimum wage for servers would force restaurants to move to a no tip model.

Whether or not an end to tipping and unionized restaurants would be a good thing is a bit murky. From a back of the house perspective I think it would be great. I suspect that tipping distorts the restaurant labor market. If restaurants had control over the entire cash flow generated by the meal, I doubt that they would choose to pay servers twice as much as cooks. If you are a server or bartender, the end of tipping would be a disaster, they would almost certainly make significantly less money. Maybe there is a social good in having some jobs that don't require a college degree or any specialized training that pay $80k.
Last edited by Chef on May 22nd, 2017, 1:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

amiller92
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby amiller92 » May 22nd, 2017, 1:45 pm

You're an effective advocate for the tip credit position, Chef. And I take the point that servers not currently clearing $15/hr would benefit from the tip credit while servers clearing more aren't hurt viz a viz their current pay. (ETA: Or, reading your last post, maybe you're just good at communicating the thinking)

But there's a lot of room between working full time at $15 ($30k at 50 weeks a year) and making $65 to $80k a year. Maybe someone making $30-40k getting a raise wouldn't be such a bad thing.

How about a compromise that literally no one will like: $20 minimum wage (phased in over time) for tipped workers with a tip credit? ;)

amiller92
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby amiller92 » May 22nd, 2017, 2:06 pm

And Robinson makes his thoughts more explicit:
The unions and politicians know what they are doing. They are not stupid. It's not difficult to figure out that the 15 Now plan forces raises to $28/hr servers for *four* years before $13/hr cooks see a dime. Unions and politicians *know* restaurants will have to move away from the tip model. They simply don't like how servers earn their money.
I guess I've not followed it close enough to know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that middle sentence does not reflect what's actually been proposed locally (maybe it's the national 15 Now position??).

Third time is the charm. I guess he's saying that the tipped server is currently making minimum wage, plus tips, so will benefit from the raising minimum wage as it's phased in, while the cook who is currently above minimum doesn't seen any benefit until the new minimum catches up to him.

Still a weird talking point, though, as it sounds more like a reason to hurry the phase in to me ;)
Last edited by amiller92 on May 22nd, 2017, 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chef
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby Chef » May 22nd, 2017, 2:09 pm

You're an effective advocate for the tip credit position, Chef. And I take the point that servers not currently clearing $15/hr would benefit from the tip credit while servers clearing more aren't hurt viz a viz their current pay. (ETA: Or, reading your last post, maybe you're just good at communicating the thinking)
I'm inclined to think that it is impossible to get rid of tipping. Places that have tried have gotten a lot of push back from their customers. If that is the case, then a tip credit prevents the perverse impact that raising the minimum wage has on the non-tipped employees in the restaurant.

Also, if minimum wage is increased without a tip credit, restaurants in Minneapolis will become noticeably more expensive than their competitors in St Paul and the suburbs. With a tip credit, I think it would be much easier for them to stay price competitive. San Francisco and Seattle both implemented their $15 minimum with a tip credit so we don't really have a guide to what would happen to the industry in terms of local competition. Ideally I would prefer the $15 minimum to be done statewide.

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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby MNdible » May 22nd, 2017, 2:58 pm

Ideally I would prefer the $15 minimum to be done statewide.
But that ignores the fact that cost of living (and community wealth to support higher wages) varies widely across the state.

mattaudio
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby mattaudio » May 22nd, 2017, 3:06 pm

Eliminating tipping sounds like a feature, not a bug.

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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby BoredAgain » May 22nd, 2017, 3:13 pm

Eliminating tipping sounds like a feature, not a bug.
I am guessing that you don't earn tips.

mattaudio
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Re: Minneapolis City Politics General Discussion

Postby mattaudio » May 22nd, 2017, 3:18 pm

Does a bonus count?


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