Working for Tips - In the latest issue of IRSH (vol 60 part 3), Patricia Van den Eeckhout tries to find out how widespread was the practice of working for tips only and paying a fee to be allowed to work in restaurants and cafés.
In Paris the majority of the waiters appeared to work for tips only from the 1840s onwards.
From the 1880s on, Brussels’ waiters’ working conditions were fairly similar. In Amsterdam and Germany most bigger establishments did pay a small fixed wage.
In most cases, waiters and waitresses had to pay for the opportunity to collect tips.
Their employers attempted to limit waiters’ income from tips to a level considered as a ‘normal’ wage.
Tip receivers were bound to see their wages decline.
For the employer, hiring workers became not only a cost-free transaction , it even developed into a source of income.
Other research articles in IRSH vol 60 part 3 (December 2015):
Paolo Raspadori on Strikes by Hotel and Restaurant Staff in Italy, 1902-1923
Giselle Nath on Belgian Organized Cosumerism and its International Entanglements (1957-1995)
IRSH’s special issue 23 (2015) deals with Migration and Ethnicity in Coalfield History : Global Perspectives.
The International Review of Social History (IRSH) is published for the IISH by Cambridge University Press.