Excerpt from the article:
Schenker says that after his years in the service industry, he has watched tipping evolve into a major part of his pay.
“If there is some means of tipping that’s available to you, that should signal to you that workers there aren’t being paid enough,” says Schenker. “Tipping is sort of an acknowledgment of that fact.”
To Schenker, customers who don’t tip are not understanding that businesses treat tips as a baked-in part of workers’ wages.
“They subsidize lower prices by paying employees less,” he says. “If you aren’t tipping, you are taking advantage of that labor.”
He was so close… Especially for someone who says himself does not make much money.
A cogent point, but nobody is saying tipping is, or should be, a solution to low wages. Tipping in the restaurant industry is an evolved, organic things that fills a specific niche. I don’t think copy-pasting that onto other industries will help workers there; but I also don’t think copy-pasting the compensation system of other industries onto restaurants will help servers. I think it can only hurt us.
The man being interviewed in the article is literally making this exact argument.
Having read the article, no, he isn’t. He’s saying that a tip interface is a sign that the employee is being underpaid, but multiple interviewees (the barista and the economist) note that tipping is an incentive that doesn’t fix the underpayment issue.