Deandra Doyle will never forget when a plate of nachos ruined her day.
“I had a customer yell at me full volume in front of the whole restaurant and it just absolutely mortified me and in the end, it wasn’t my mistake, but you’re the face that people see when there’s something wrong with their food.”
Doyle knows the ups and downs of waitressing better than most. The STU student has been doing it for seven years.
She is just one server in the province who may experience a wage freeze.
The provincial government is conducting a survey to ask if there should be a separate minimum wage for servers
who earn tips.
It’s called tip differential, which means when minimum wage increases, server’s wages will stay the same.
Minimum wage in New Brunswick, which is $9.50 an hour, is supposed to rise to $10 an hour in April.
Doyle has served at banquets, golf courses and pubs and said it’s not fair to assume all waitresses earn good tips.
“Right now, I’m at a very good establishment. I do pretty well for myself, but I also worked at a breakfast place where I’d work an eight or nine hour shift and would maybe come out with $40.”
Doyle doesn’t agree with setting a separate wage for servers and said you have to know the restaurant business before you can understand how a
server’s job works.
“Sometimes you don’t serve at all. At a lot of places, you have to take turns doing things like expediting, so setting up the food…and other nights you are a hostess, so you don’t even seat tables.
You don’t actually serve them, so you don’t make any tips.”
Luc Erjavec is the vice-president atlantic for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, a company that represents businesses in the country’s food service industry.
Though some are calling the proposed change “two-tiered,” Erjavec said this isn’t the case, because the province already has different rates for minimum wage.
“To say ‘this is a big change, we’re going to have more than one minimum wage,’ is kind of ridiculous, because for farm workers in the province, there’s no minimum wage, so it’s not really a fair assessment.”
Though the proposal is in the early stages, if implemented, Erjavec said it wouldn’t affect all servers in the province.
“We (CRFA) have been the main proponents and we would envision it as strictly for servers in licensed establishments.”
He said introducing this system is necessary to help the province’s economic woes and will not only help restaurant owners balance their books, but will secure more hours for servers.
“We’ve seen a minimum wage that has gone up in the last two years about three times the rate of inflation and when a third of your costs are wages…there’s a pressure on employers to reduce costs by shortening hours, getting rid of employees, investing less in their businesses and price increases.”
David Murell is an economics professor at the University of New Brunswick and said restaurant owners in the province already face challenges in attracting business.
They would benefit from a wage relief, he said.
“We’re really the only atlantic province that isn’t tourist friendly.”
Murell fled western Pennsylvania in 1970 as a draft dodger. He had three days notice to leave the country, or he would be enlisted for Vietnam.
His first job was washing dishes and he knows first-hand the struggles of finding employment.
“I went through a period of poverty with semi-skilled work. I was trying to save money to go back to university. I generally had to work my way through third and fourth year at the University of Ottawa.”
He said the tip differential would be positive, if it means businesses could afford to hire more young people.
“I tend to be in favour of a lower minimum wage, because I think it’s more important for young people to have access to work than the actual minimum wage.”
The online survey can be found on the provincial government’s website until Dec. 14.
