The state needs to do their job. One year and a thousand or so lawsuits (exactly 0% chance the state has the resources to do this) and the problem will go away. Manicures will end up costing $20 instead of $10, and workers will be able to live like people and not animals.
Are you accounting for the loss of customers that doubling the prices would cause?
I think everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, but I have strong fear about removing the bottom rungs of the ladder - sometimes the value that people provide is well below their cost and they need to get started.
A question that won't be answered without an elasticity of demand curve for good nails.
Given that manicured nails are largely driven by cultural expectations, I'd suspect that a $10 increase won't change much.
The ladies doing the manicures will be unemployed, but since they're not getting paid now, they'll actually be better off.
They need to skip the lawsuits and throw the owners in prison. Working for weeks with no pay is practically slavery.
Edit: Now that I think about it, why isn't the IRS looking into this, too? I have a hard time believing the owners aren't paying their workers, but are paying proper taxes and withholdings for them.
Why? The electorate is stupid and being made stupid by eagerly consuming media selling information entertainment, acting on the political and financial will of their owners.
Partisan bullshit, and the willingness to participate in it by citizens on _every_ side, is the major threat to our democracy.
It is apparent that many societies unlearn how to get things done. Instead we learned to mourn things we can not right.
We can go to the moon, perform fusion on atoms, but finding an arrangement where large pluralities of hard-working people live better than $30 a day, after months without pay, and a $100 down payment in the most expensive city in the USA is something 'we can not right.' To propose policy that would harm businesses who subsist only by virtue of (by any reasonable definition) exploitation is to 'plunder some salons.'
…I wonder what guides your brain to believe that?
What makes you think the cosmetologists are not owners themselves (and hence self-employed, exempt from minimum wage), 1099 independent contractors (and hence exempt) or simply undocumented in the United States?
As to the owner issue, that's possible, but everyone would need a near equil share or minimum wage laws still apply. AKA giving someone 0.1% generally does not let you dodge minimum wage laws.
As I understand it, they often set their own hours, supply their own equipment, control how they do their job, and rent space in which to do it from the establishment in which they do it, which provides services like centralized collection and distribution of customer payments.
I'd like to see the argument as to why, using the actual criteria used to define contractor vs. employee relations, they wouldn't be classed as contractors.
From the IRS list the examples given seem clear cut. http://www.careerusa.org/resources/career-files/100-resource...
1. Fails location test, likely others.
2. A no pay period fails this test.
3. Fails
4. Fails
5. likely fails
6. Fails
7. likely fails. A predefined time to show up counts as set hours.
8. likely fails.
9. Fails
10. (case by case basis)
11. No reports, but direct supervision likely fails.
12. likely fails.
13. likely pass.
14. likely pass.
15. Fail
16. ? depends
17. likely fails.
18. likely fails.
19. Fails
20. Fails(Aside: That's probably why BigCos hire contractors by making them go W2 with a staffing agency and contracting the staffing agency to make you available full time.)
How come? The setup with most hair cutting salons is that you "rent" a station from the owner, and then arrange your own clientele and participate in some kind of rotation of walk-in customers.
Most non-corporate hair cutting places don't have any employees (and the need for higher-level client management led to startups like StyleSeat).
I believe the set-up is similar with non-corporate professional massage therapists as well - the "table space" is rented out, the therapist is then responsible for booking clients.
That's not to say it has to be that way - Square, Styleseat, Mytime are all targeting this, but we still have cash customers, check customers, etc.
Either fix laws or enforce them. There should not be other options save for failed states.