Here is what I see in Portland with the higher server minimum.

Servers make bank. They get $9.25 an hour and tips on top of that. To preserve profits in the low margin restaurant business the rest of the staff is lucky to get $10 an hour. Skilled culinarians get $12. Most the minorities that this article pretends to be concerned for don't wait tables and don't get raises when the server minimum is bumped up to the same as everyone else.

I was making $12 an hour in a $2.35 state working as a line cook in 1996 (I still fought my way out of the BOH so I could make more money as a 2.35 tipped worker at a the same shitty chain resturant). I'd count myself lucky to work up to $12 after a year of high qulaity work at a place two decades later in a town with minimum wage parity.

Market rent is $1100-1200 for a one bedroom in my less desirable neighborhood. If cooks couldn't eat at work they would be starving. They all live in houses and aprtrments packed with as many roommates as humanly possible.

Minimum wage parity only suppresses the wages of the lowest paid employees in these circumstances. I'm sure it has different effects in other places but as far as it applies to this guy's piece it's pertinent, he's just as willing to narrowly apply a few instances or bits of evidence to the greater system.

We are on the cusp of a $15 minimum wage in greater Portland with rural oregon getting a lesser but significant hike. No cooks will get raises for a long long time after it goes into effect but it will go a long way toward making their lives easier than wage parity which only increased the suffering off all the non-tipped staff at restaurants.

Lol, I'm so used to the NYT's assult on restaurant employees wages that I forgot what I was reading.

I do think the higher minimum is the main reason service is terrible in this town. After gorging themselves on a princly 9.25 an hour many wait staff don't seem to have an appetite for doing their fucking job. Too often I've wondered why my fellow employees come to work, because it doesn't seem to be a desire to maximize the profitability of their work hours. I feel this burn most when splitting tips and they are on their fourth 20 minute smoke break with their friends.