Emmer responds to criticism over service worker minimum wage plan

“Ready, Fire! Aim…”

Does this guy think before he speaks?

I think not.

Let me get this straight: the reason 4,000 jobs in the hospitality industry were lost is because wages are too high. It had nothing to do with a severe economic downturn and a fall-off in demand for the services of that industry.

Got it.

How stupid is this guy about business? If you get to cut a major expense like server wages by 2/3rds, you don’t look to find a way to increase that line item back up to old levels. You hire people when you need them. You give people raises when you need to…

You just cut your labor expenses and increased your profits while running your business exactly the same. Cut prices? Why unless your competition cuts theirs. You just increased your profit level so you will bank it or take it as personal profit.

Emmer is a drag on the whole Republican ticket if this is the kind of solutions without problems they are trying to push.

Wow, Randy, reading is fundamental. Go back and read that line again.

Emmer isn’t “pushing” anything. While he was in a restaurant, a reporter asked him a quetion about this issue. He gave his honest opinion, describing how most other states do it and their rationale.

His only point, to you economics-challenged readers, is that with a lower mandatory wage, an employer can hire more peoeple for the same amount of money. And if those people don’t really depend on their wage to make a living because they make most of it in tips, that idea may be a good one when a lot of people are looking for work.

Man, you guys are dense.

Let’s try to be clear first. The “tip credit” Emmer refers to is a lower minimum wage standard for those who receive tips. So restaurants may pay less in hourly rate if you earn tips.

That is a wage cut, pure and simple.

He says it will “help” servers …. i guess if you pay each one less, a restaurant could afford to have more servers.

Make no mistake – this is simply a transfer of money from servers to hospitality business owners. And Mr Emmer doesn’t talk about them needing to make less income, to spread the business around among more restaurants so more restaurant owners can be minimally successful.

Mr. Emmer still believes that it’s workers – servers, teachers, firefighters – who are the problem in the US economy – if we’d just lower our wage demands, everything would be fine.

I reject his class warfare against those among us who take home the least. Let Mr. Emmer calls for sacrifice by business owners, not just the wage earners who help those owners to earn profits

This discussion of wage distribution is not unlike the nurses strike debate in that the nurses wanted more money, but they also wanted the employer to hire more people per shift.

In a bad economy, you can’t have both without the employer going broke. So you’re either for helping out-of-work people find jobs with your employer, or you’re greedy and want to keep your already-higher-than-most wages and let the unemployed suffer.

Which is it, “progressives?”

Hey dumb dumb Denise.Try working for less than minimum wage.Thanks to your repulsive republican buddies and their corporate masters that decided to export most of the decent paying jobs to Mexico,India and China,this country is self destructing.What a waste!!!

“In a bad economy….” – people still get sick and still need health care.

But, what do you care? It simply sucks to be them.

Of course, in this “bad economy” it certainly doesn’t suck to be, say, Stephen Hemsley.

Billions for CEO types, and screw the hired help – that is what November’s election is all about; the GreedOverPrinciples Party sticking up for the Stephen Hemsleys and Tony Suttons and Bill Coopers and the DFL sticking up for nurses and waitresses and tellers.

Oh – and thank you for proving, once again, that:

“Those that forget the lessons of history, tend to vote GOP.”

Dennis, the bad economy had nothing to do with the nurses’ strike. The hospitals in question had made $750 million in profits the year before and yet they were asking nurses to give up ground on wages, pensions, furloughs, and the number of workers per shift. Clearly, the nurses made an initial offer that they didn’t expect the hospitals to accept, hoping to reach compromise.

The hospitals admitted that the only new demand was setting strict ratios of workers per patient, which hospitals liberally estimated at costing $250 million total per year. States already have ratio laws for daycares, but hospital units outside CA are exempt from even very weak ratios.

I would think that instead of having 3 100K servers, it would be better to have six 50K workers. And Obama got crap talking about redistribution of wealth! And since when did any conservative have any care for the unemployed? Face it Dennis, Emmer screwed up here, just about as big as you are a screw up. Emmer will lose in November by double digits.

Emmer is an idiot. Let him work for minimum wage and tips. Let him give back all the per diem he collected and then filed a law suit about. What a clown!
I stopped going out to eat when they banned smoking. I now have a ton of money saved and can eat and smoke all I want with my meals at home. I don’t even have to tip the cook or the people who serve me my meal.
Emmer=idiot in my book

Someday, after the economy collapses, fiscal conservatives may begin to remember that there is more to an economy than business profits. The American worker/consumer is critical to our economy, and recovery is not possible without a prosperous working class.

The constant upward redistribution of wealth, the endless assault on labor, the mindless class warfare against the working class, all of these things are eroding the very viability of our economy.

Idealogues like Emmer need to learn, sooner rather than later, that when you cut wages, you cut the primary means of sustainable economic growth. You just cannot strengthen a business by shrinking it’s customer base.

if you hire more servers in an economic recession….you just have more people on the clock making less money. I don’t really want more than one server for 20 customers. This doesn’t have anything to do with nurses! come on folks! really? Nurses are so stressed out and work so hard to provide the best care for our sick and we have the nerve to comment on that? do you know a nurse? are you aware? please don’t compare our nurses with our servers. restaurant owners are not making millions like the hospitals are. they don’t pay their workers/managers nearly what they’re worth either. but not because they pay $5.00 more per hour to their staff than our surrounding states!

The only way the tip credit can create jobs is if there is a provision added to it explaining that the money employers will benefit from this credit must be spent on employing more employees. The way the law currently stands. Employers can simply pocket the financial benefits derived from the ability to steal part of the tips customers are presenting their workers.

The tip credit should be repealed on the grounds it is a law that underhandedly steals the public’s charity intended for underpaid workers in the service industry.