If you are out for a meal this weekend, tipping will seem like a straightforward part of paying the bill. But if you’re serving that meal in the wrong restaurant, there will be nothing straightforward about getting all the tips that you’ve earned. After an impressive campaign by waiters and the Unite union, Pizza Express announced this week that it would desist from cutting an 8% sliver out of gratuities, but many other restaurants, including other big chains, continue to diddle staff and customers alike through so-called admin fees.
An impulse to give on the part of the British consumer provokes an equal and opposite impulse to grab from the British employer. Traditionally, extra cash that was plonked in front of an employee was, by legal convention as well as common sense, always theirs – just as it was intended to be. But when payment went plastic, clever lawyers popped up and successfully argued that since gratuities added to cards were paid in the name of – and in the first instance to – the house, they were the property of the house, too. For a time, tips expropriated this way were even counted towards the minimum wage, diluting that duty of the employer. Gordon Brown’s government closed down that particular loophole, but other fiddles continue.
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