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Understanding the ‘Tipped Minimum Wage’: Critical Directions for US Policy Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2020

Jacqueline Ross  and
John Welsh
Jacqueline Ross
Affiliation:
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
John Welsh
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

With the ‘gig economy’ moving to the forefront of research on service labour, interest has heightened in the techniques of labour control that reproduce it. Taking tipping as just such a technique, this article explores critically the policy research around ‘tipped’ employment in the United States. In the United States, tipping is a legally recognised form of labour remuneration that informalises the wage relation, incentivises the worker in precarity, and internalises social relations of subordination. Understanding tipped work, its legal status, its operative logic, and the contradictions that arise within its framework, is a priority for relevant social policy analysis. The aims here are: 1) to set out the ‘topography’ of the policy landscape on tipping in the United States; and 2) to problematise the current scope of this policy literature in societal terms. This research will focus on the restaurant industry, but will establish its broader societal significance.

Keywords

Intersectionalityminimum wagerestaurant industrysociology of worktipping
Type
Article
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 192 - 210
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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