If $9 for board and lodging is deducted from the $16.50 minimum wage of the District of Columbia, $7.50 is left as the minimum wage for this group of workers. When the wages of chambermaids living-in are taken, it will be noted that only four out of twenty-nine hotels pay this wage or more, and that over half pay between $6 and $7 per week.
Waitresses in one hotel in New York City where board and room are furnished received $6.92 a week. Pantry workers, who are a skilled class, received one of the highest wage rates found for women workers in hotels. They have, however, no access to tips. In one hotel they received $50 a month with board and lodging, or $11.53 a week, and in another hotel $55 a month with board and lodging, or $12.29 a week. In two hotels kitchen workers received $30 a month whether they lived in or out.
Tipping
Tips, or the giving of gratuities by the patrons of the hotel to workers who serve them, is the most unstandardized part of the earnings of the worker. Because the giving of tips depends not only on the whim of the public but upon the general prosperity of the country and the individual prosperity of the patron, it admits of no standardization. Tipping seems incongruous in that, by its own definition, the function of the hotel is service. It amounts to a direct payment by the public of a part of the worker’s wage.
It should be remembered that tips are received by chambermaids and waitresses only. There are large numbers of bathmaids, cleaners, pantry and kitchen help who have no access to tips.
The disadvantages of tipping
The practice of tipping is defended by both workers and managers, although it operates to the disadvantage of both. The management defends tipping on the ground that the public wishes to tip. “He feels the servant has given something extra and unexpected and he wants to pay something for it—he tips.”[[9]] This manager indirectly admits, however, that tipping is an imposition on the patron when he assures his guests that no discourtesy will be shown a guest who does not tip. If managers were candid they might admit that they wish the public to tip because it enables them to pay their employees a lower wage rate.
[9]. Statler Service Codes. P. 7.
Patrons are frequently annoyed by the persistency of workers in procuring tips. The guest who tips will get service at the expense of the guest who doesn’t—maids are frank to admit this—and there is consequently dissatisfaction of one class of guests. A guest in a hotel has come to feel that the hotel rate is but one item in the expense of staying there and naturally he resents it.