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We love anti worker Europeans.
Tip your servers and bartenders or go to McDonald’s. Don’t be rude while you’re a guest.
Make your capitalists pay their workers what they are worth, it’s rude to milk the guests for something you should have done ages ago.
- Company refuses pay worker enough. Expects tips to cover the gap.
- World Cup visitors refuse to tip. Says company should pay more.
- Worker gets f*cked over from both ends.
- Company still gets their money so they going give a f*ck.
- World Cup visitors get to feel self-righteous.
- Worker is still f*cked over, can’t pay their rent or buy groceries.
Seems like you’re just being cheap assholes to me. A couple idioms come to mind:
- two wrongs don’t make a right.
- when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
*fuck. You can say fuck on the internet. Don’t worry, we won’t tell your mommy.
I appreciate america-dunking as much as everyone but are we really going to pretend that there is no exploitation in the service industry in Europe?
EDIT: PS, if you want to actually do something beyond smugly complaining, put your money where your mouth is:
- https://secure.actblue.com/donate/unite-here / https://unitehere.org/
- https://sbworkersunited.org/ upper right, button for donation: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/5AFGEN89WKKCN
I detest whataboutism
It might be whataboutism if it were shielding the Americans. It’s not.
It really is, because it comes with the underlying one-dimensional view of the entire situation. There’s an entire underground economy that exists because of the unfair labor practices. But you don’t want to talk about that.
I absolutely want to talk about it. Let’s talk about it.
EDIT, in the spirit of actually talking about it:
In the North American context, in the US but also in Canada, one of the largest existing unions that organizes hospitality workers is UNITE HERE. They have done some pretty awesome strikes and mobilizations the last decade. There is a long history of hospitality union organizing that was, you know what’s coming, crushed by the red scare. Of course another thing to mention is the unionization of Starbucks, where the IWW played an important role. Overall, yea, the service sector in North America is a very important sector in the fight to reassert the rights of the working class.
In the European context, I don’t know much beyond my own home country. I know for example that there was just on Wednesday a massive strike, fighting back against for example the egregious 13 hour day that the government has imposed, but more importantly at the complete arbitrariness that the workers are subjected to as the fucking conservatives are turning a blind eye to employer law breaking. I would love to hear more about how the working class is organizing across the EU. For example, there is an article by La Strada but I would love to know more.
Basically, in Europe and in North America, and of course beyond the West, the working class everywhere is being squeezed also in the hospitality sector. We need to be organizing, casting aside silly divisions and organizing within the framework of internationalist solidarity. My point is that the meme tries to turn a class problem into facile euro-smugness score pointing, leaving untouched the fact that it’s the same capitalist exploitation with American and European characteristics respectively.
in Europe and in North America, and of course beyond the West, the working class everywhere is being squeezed
In the West? Just look what happens beyond the West … in China, for example, there’s a 996 working culture, and the only union that is allowed ‘acts’ under the command of the Chinese Communist Party. And these are by far not the only problems of China’s working class.
Russia? No better there …
There’s a lot room for improvement in the West, but your framing of the problem and your attempt to limit the issue of abusive labour conditions to the West has nothing to do with reality as the problems are much bigger in autocratic states.
Self-righteous euro-trash deprive workers of pay they know the workers deserve, in order to stick it to management, who is unaffected by this action. Great work, guys, way to attack the victims of a bad system by making whipping boys of them, I’m sure that their bosses rolling in money from all the extra business are VERY upset. What a bunch of assholes. I’m sure these same pieces of animated fecal matter get upset when tourists to their countries ignore all the local customs and mistreat the workers.
If you can’t tip, don’t go to the restaurant or bar. Those workers depend on their tips. And the restaurant or bar isn’t just gonna make up the difference for the server just because you decided not to tip.
Those Europeans are being dicks.
That’ll show those service workers for working in the US.
Don’t get me wrong I fucking hate tipping culture so much and am eternally grateful that I don’t live in the US but who are you really punishing here?
In the current system it will not change unless it is forced by things like this or progressive policies. You want them to just keep it going how it is?
World cup is too short term to change it, will have to be slow policy push for minimum wages.
If you want people to strike then support them, misleading them into thinking you’re going to be paying them for their time and labor (tipping is expected in the US, which is why in many states it’s legal to pay servers barely more than $2/hour) is just a dick move. Or just be upfront with them and tell them you’re not going to be tipping and get served accordingly. Or go to a place where non-tipped workers are employed. There are a lot of options that aren’t ‘shit on someone working for $2/hour and tell them it’s for their own good’.
For instance in Atlanta, the minimum cash wage for a tipped server is $2.13 per hour. If tips combined with wages do not reach the state minimum of $7.25, the employer must make up the difference.
And is $7.25 a livable wage in Atlanta?
Not even slightly.
But that doesn’t mean it should be the customer’s job to make up for the employer’s abuse.
It’s built into the price of the meal. It’s more systemic than making the customer pay the wait staff. The profit margins on food are razor-thin, despite “offloading” wait staff salary and no one in the restaurant getting healthcare. If you’re not going to tip, then don’t go out to eat. Going out and not tipping exclusively hurts the staff.
Going out and not tipping exclusively hurts the staff.
Staying in hurts them more when their place of business closes down due to lack of customers.
