University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts PhD researcher John Frank Burgess has assessed the origins, drivers and social consequences of tipping in Australia and in the widely accepted "home" of tipping, the United States.
The research, conducted in bars across Australia and New York, found tipping flourished in America in the early 1900s because a deregulated labour market forced waiters and bartenders to top-up dwindling pay packets with tips.
"And this might be where Australia is heading within four to five decades," Mr Burgess told SBS.
"Australia's relatively well regulated labour market has so far protected workers from the need to chase tips."
"But if we continue down a path of labour market deregulation, then sooner or later tipping will become normalised."
The thesis study, 'Exchange in American and Australian Public Bars: Tipping as a Social Fact', identified several reasons why people tip.
These include:
- A sense of social obligation
- To underscore personal relationships
- To display financial standing
- As a conversation starter
- To get rid of loose change
"Tipping is just something Americans have to do, it’s not so much about rewarding quality service," Mr Burgess said.
While America’s shift away from the fixed wages system has strengthened patron relationships with staff, protective provisions such as liveable minimum wages have enabled a disconnect between Australian service-employees and patrons.
Burgess predicts the market anti-tipping morality and anti-egalitarian sentiments will eventually give way to necessity as it did in late-nineteenth century America.
"If it’s one where it’s guided by free market principals, then that’s fine. But one of the consequences of that is a shift of power towards employers, and another consequence will be tipping."
