Restaurant Horror Show: How Servers Are Abused

“Employers wanted to have workers in the union because consumers would associate that with the best service, the best food,” Cobble said. Restaurants would advertize their union membership with cards in the window.

To try to push restaurant owners toward better practices, ROC publishes Michelin-like ratings guides and an app that covers a handful of major cities.

Not all states allow employers to get away with paying the federal minimum of $2.13 an hour. Many have set minimum wages higher than the federal minimum, or allow a smaller deduction for tipped employees. A few states, like California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, don’t allow any deduction at all for tipped employees — in San Francisco, the inflation-pegged minimum wage, including for all restaurant employees, tipped or untipped,  is currently $10.55.

Gary Alan Fine, a professor of sociology at Northwestern, studied the culture of restaurants from inside the kitchen for his book “Kitchens.” It changed the way he thought about the work that goes on behind the kitchen door, and the way he tips. Fine will sometimes leave an extra $20 just for the dishwashers, he said.

“No one pays them any attention,” he said. “The way that the economic system of the restaurant is structured is that it’s based upon tips. We as diners have to recognize that.”