They're trying their best to make it seem that government policies and regulation compliance costs are responsible, hence the names of these charges.
Notice how you never see things like "Business License Fee" or "Restaurant Electricity Bill Surcharge" listed out as separate line items on customers' bills. Those are things restaurant owners have to pay, too, so why don't they get their own charges to customers? Why does only "Living Wage" get a line item on the customer's bill?
"Fuel surcharge" on flights. Which should be illegal: the cost of hedging fuel cost risk should be included in any ticket price.
A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver (who pays for the fuel). If true I would find that interesting.
I did a bit of a dive on this and I think it’s not correct. I have a low threshold for hating them, after the reports of how females staffers were treated a few years back, but this new thing seems to be untrue.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128042303/uber-introduces-f...
Unfortunately you’ve spoken too soon on this one. I recently had an energy surcharge added due to the “Iran war” (as explained by the server) added to every check.
Nevermind that California doesn't even have a lower "tipped" min wage like some states do, so by supporting tipping, we're just saying that servers simply "deserve" more money for some reason than people who stock shelves or pick orders at Amazon or Walmart.
Although I will admit service is notoriously bad over here but in honesty that's secretly how we all want it.
Isn't this the thing the government is saying in California? They passed a law requiring restaurants to pay the same minimum wage as jobs where workers don't get tips, on top of the tips, essentially making it the law that people in tipped occupations have to be paid more than what can be paid to people doing any other kind of work.
Unless the point is to get customers to stop tipping because a) the workers are now guaranteed the same minimum wage as anyone else even if they don't and b) they can't afford the tip on top of the prices that now have the higher minimum wage priced into them anyway.