Elizabeth Gunnison Dunn thinks so. From her piece at Esquire:
The friendships I've formed with restaurant employees over the years have made me think seriously about why hospitality workers are singled out among America's professionals to endure a pass-the-hat system of compensation. Why should a server's pay depend upon the generosity — not to mention dubious arithmetic skills — of people like me?
So I was thrilled to hear that New York City's Sushi Yasuda recently decided to eliminate tipping altogether. Including gratuity for parties of six or more has already become relatively commonplace; in a few restaurants, like Thomas Keller's Per Se and The French Laundry, it's automatically added onto all checks. But Yasuda has gone one step further, dispensing with service as a separate line item — and implicitly, an "extra" — and folding it into their prices as a cost of doing business, along with the rent, and electricity, and ingredients. ...
Backlashes against the tipping practice are not new. There was an anti-tipping movement at the beginning of the 20th century amongst Americans who saw it as an aristocratic holdover contrary to the country's democratic ideals. Between 1909 and 1915 six states passed anti-tipping laws, all of which were repealed by the mid-1920's as unenforceable or potentially unconstitutional. Samuel Gompers, who founded the AFL, was one political figure notably outspoken against tipping as promoting detrimental class distinctions.(h/t Kottke)
