The Alumni Memorial Union administration recently pulled tip jars from the counters at the Brew Bayou and other Brew locations. The university claims this was part of an audit of practices at the union in general. To have loose cash of any kind around the register is seen as sloppy money-handling policy, and as such the tip jars should be removed.

This is disagreeable to some students who claim to have made up to an extra dollar per hour in tips. The argument "every coffee shop has a tip jar so why can't we" holds some weight, but it is a minor concern within the framework of business management at the Brew.

Since at least one administrator has suggested that the Tuesday Tribune article "Trouble brewing" has caused some "morale problems" among Brew Bayou employees, it is important to state something up front; if the AMU administration or Sodexho is unhappy with something in the Brew, they should and will change it.

However, there must be some kind of compromise that can be worked out between the Brew Bayou employees,the administration and the regular customers of the coffee shop.

The compromise should allow the Brew employees to receive tips collected in a manner suitable to the university's accounting procedures and also allow the customers to show their gratification for the services the Brew employees provide.

One suggestion is to collect the tips in a lockbox with a slot in the top for bill or coin collection. At the end of a month, the total is removed and divided up as a proportion of the total hours worked by each employee.

While this would require some unique accounting procedures on the part of Sodexho, it might be worth it to alleviate some of the tensions.

If a solution is to be reached, it should be made as a three-way negotiation between student workers, the administration and Sodexho.

Any negotiations should be made in light of the following fact: most tipped employees receive an average of $2.85 per hour in addition to any tips that are made, well below the Federal minimum wage standard since tips are considered to make up the gap, according to Marilyn Bugenhagen, director of the AMU.

Bugenhagen said the Brew employees typically receive in excess of $6 per hour as an hourly rate, and thus if the tips are as important to the student employees as they claim they are, a cut in pay could almost certainly be in line as part of the tips negotiations.

If Sodexho management poses consistent problems to the independent-minded Brew employees, it might be a worthwhile exercise to examine establishing an independent coffee shop, similar to Ruby G's. The administration could also look into taking over the management of the Brew from Sodexho.

Either of these solutions should be viewed as a measure of last resort, not as a functioning reality of the negotiations in question.

It should not come to any of these more extreme measures. We hope that any result doesn't interfere with the management of a successful, reasonably priced coffee shop.

This editorial appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 19 2005.