That excuse is just bull. A restaurant can afford that 3% a lot more than a server can.It is fairly common for restaurants to take 3% out of servers credit card tips, because the restaurants don't get that money either, it is the banks that are skimming it off the top in terms of processing fees.We won't go to Parasole restaurants since they skim the tips of the wait staff.
This is entirely the wrong way to approach this. Restaurant management is counting on a divided staff. The right way to approach this is to demand fair wages from management for everyone. As soon as workers fight each other for scraps, they've lost.The minimum wage hike will probably have no net effect on restaurant profitability, but the lack of a tip credit for minimum wage has a profoundly anti-progressive effect on the distribution of wages within individual restaurants. Because Minnesota is one of the few states to not have a tip credit, front of the house labor costs run higher here which means that back of the house labor gets squeezed harder than it otherwise would. When people who are making $40k to $60k a year in tips get a raise because minimum wage goes up, that money doesn't come out of the profits of the restaurant, it comes out of the pockets of the lower paid dishwashers and cooks in the form of lost raises. A line cook who is making $11 an hour and working two jobs will probably benefit a lot less from the increase in minimum wage than a part time bartender who is bringing in $400 a night on their weekend shifts downtown. That doesn't seem fair to me.
The right way to approach this would be to contact your SEIU local.