Compensating Tipped Work: Security Cameras as a Tool for Time Use Measurement

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54
Author(s):  
Emily D. Campion ◽  
Michael C. Campion ◽  
Michael A. Campion

While tipped labor is common in the United States, it presents potential issues for employers unable to demonstrate how tipped workers use their time, thus violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and attracting lawsuits. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, if tipped employees spend more than 20% of their workweek completing non-tipped tasks (e.g., cleaning, stocking), then they are eligible for the Federal minimum wage ($7.25 in 2018) for the hours beyond 20%, rather than the minimum wage for tipped employees ($2.13 in 2018). Traditionally, employers have used self-report data or observers to determine time use, but these are problematic given self-report bias and the Hawthorne effect. In response, we conducted a study using security cameras to document employee time use in a sample of employees at a large chain restaurant. We found that the sample did not violate the 20% rule. Furthermore, we demonstrated an alternative method to study time use with technology most service-based companies already have.

Author(s):  
Guillaume Rocheteau ◽  
Murat Tasci

The federal minimum wage was established in 1938 by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Initially set at 25 cents an hour, the wage has been raised periodically to reflect changes in inflation and productivity. From September 1997 to the beginning of 2007, the minimum wage stood at $5.15 an hour, but its real value declined steadily from about 40 percent of the average private nonsupervisory wage to a mere 30 percent. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage was lower at the beginning of 2007 than at any time since 1955 (see figure 1). Meanwhile, the wage affected fewer people, as the fraction of hourly workers who earned no more than the minimum dropped from around 15 percent in 1980 to just 2.2 percent in 2006. On May 24, 2007, Congress passed a bill raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25 in three phases over two years.


2021 ◽  
pp. 41-43
Author(s):  
Kshama Mumbai

“The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike”, prompted the first minimum wage law in the United States in 1912. Various states followed suit over the next two decades, and in 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created a federal minimum wage (FLSA).The basic incentive behind the introduction of the Act was to reduce income inequality.A rise in minimum wage acts as a form of relocation of wealth from higher-income people to lower-income people. In principle, Congress amends the FLSA on a regular basis to raise the federal minimum wage to levels necessary for even the lowest-paying workforces in the economy.It also aims to help low-wage workers benefit from overall economywide advances in living standards. However, this has historically not always been the case. In 1968, The Poor People’s 1 Campaign started because of not raising the minimum wage to sufficient levels . The explicit purpose of the federal minimum wage is to help increase consumer purchasing power which stimulates the economy and to keep America's workforces out of poverty.However,the law failed to include the automatic cost of living adjustments and led to inflation eroding the real value of the minimum wage over time. There is a dire need for legislative action to raise the nation’s wage floor, more so than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic.Unless consumer's purchasing power is increased,it will be difficult to come out of this recession.Further,the minimum wage is a direct concern for poverty levels and gender / racial inequality.This paper aims to analyze previous work on the issue and provide further recommendations for the same.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL LEVINSON WILK

Modern people are obsessed with money, but the practice of tipping a waiter or chambermaid is a counterbalance against money’s tendency to infect human relations. People who tip infect money back, with nonmonetary values. This article provides a general history of tips investing money and monetary exchange with ideals such as status, dignity, waste, care, and play, in certain parts of the United States, c. 1880–1929. It also offers a case study of railroad red caps’ tips in the five years following passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938; when tipping declined, it reduced red caps’ ability to invest their work with nonmonetary values.


1995 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Seltzer

Although in the last two decades there have been literally hundreds of studies of postwar minimum wage legislation, there have been but a handful of studies of the first federal minimum wage, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), and no studies of the state laws that preceded it.1 My dissertation attempts to bridge this gap by examining the political economy and effects of early American minimum wage legislation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (S2) ◽  
pp. S329-S367
Author(s):  
Martha J. Bailey ◽  
John DiNardo ◽  
Bryan A. Stuart

1997 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 396-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Seltzer

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 imposed a binding minimum wage on the southern seamless hosiery and lumber industries. However, the process of adjusting to the new minimum differed across the two industries. Seamless hosiery firms substituted capital for labor and converted or replaced old machinery. Southern lumber firms employed fewer workers relative to northern and western firms, however, changes in their resource base and war-related government purchases prevented an absolute decrease in employment levels. Numerous southern lumber firms continued to pay less than minimum rates by illegally evading the act or taking advantage of the intra-stage exemption.


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