chapotraphouse

Yeah, that's fair, I don't have much of a grasp of the specifics of the case beyond the article. And I agree that tipping is worse than non-tipped waged work under sectoral collective bargaining and that we should have the latter as our goal as long as we remain within a capitalist framework. Indeed, from my experience, in a lot of places where tipping isn't customary and they do have sectoral bargaining waiters take it as something of an affront to be tipped. French waiters are often somewhat offended by attempts to tip them - precisely because it is perceived as an attack on their dignity as workers.

But I still think that we should be careful in uncritically supporting the abolition of tipping outside of circumstances in which a sector is sufficiently well-organised. We've seen so many examples in the last few decades in which often positive reforms, which were initially demanded by workers, have been co-opted by capital to undermine conditions and wages precisely because those reforms took place in a general context where workers haven't been well-organised enough to defend themselves against the attacks of capital. The demand for flexible working practices/hours in the 1970s and 80s is a good example of this process, where what should have been positive reforms have had extremely mixed results in that they've played a large role in creating conditions of casualisation and mass under-employment. In many sectors, 'flexible working' has meant flexibility to work sporadic hours whenever your boss decides with the knowledge that if you're not sufficiently flexible to their demands you'll stop being given work.

I also do think that the 'it divides the working class' argument is the weakest one, because what it really ends up expressing is a consoomer mindset that as communists/anarchists we should challenge rather than accept. While I'm sure that our comrades on here are arguing in good faith and have decent reasons for wanting to abolish tipping, this isn't representative of the debate overall. Most of the discourse I've encountered on the topic has been on reddit and is predictably treat-brained. The framing is almost always primarily 'tipping is too expensive!' with questions about the conditions/rights of workers relegated to a secondary position that often feels tacked on to cover that the primary demand is 'I want things to be cheaper even if that means workers are paid less'. You can say this is unfair, but the last 40 years of economic reform have shown us that people who identify more strongly with being a consumer than a worker will buy the cheaper commodity made by workers labouring under worse conditions and less pay 99 times out of 100