I didn't realize that servers and other tipped employees weren't covered by the minimum wage...
Last month, many of our nation's low-wage workers got their first raise in a decade as the federal minimum wage inched up to $5.85 an hour. But millions more who are paid in part with tips—low-wage workers like waiters and waitresses, car wash attendants, and delivery workers—are still waiting. For them the minimum wage has been frozen at a meager $2.13 an hour for 16 years. And the restaurant industry—which fights to block pay increases for tipped workers—has lobbied hard to keep it that way. It's time for Congress to stand up to this special interest and give the nearly three million Americans who work for tips a long overdue raise.Posted by jt at August 9, 2007 05:37 PM
In the past, tipped workers weren't always excluded from minimum wage hikes. For decades, employers were required to pay them a base wage of at least half the federal minimum wage. This guaranteed a stable income that was automatically adjusted as the minimum wage went up. And it reflected changes in the cost of living and recognized that tips are notoriously unpredictable and can vary substantially depending on work schedules, seasons, and broader economic trends.
But in 1996, when President Bill Clinton shamed House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congress into raising the minimum wage, Republican lawmakers sided with restaurant industry lobbyists and excluded tipped workers by permanently freezing their minimum wage at $2.13. This resulted in a tipped-worker minimum wage that is worth less and less every year, forcing them to rely almost entirely on tips to make ends meet. Ultimately, it's meant lower and less certain pay for millions of Americans.
Restaurant industry lobbyists defend their position by focusing on waiters and waitresses at high-end restaurants who earn a lot of money in tips. But such workers are the exception, not the rule. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average waiter or waitress in the U.S. makes just over $17,000 per year including tips—hardly enough to support a family, as many of these women and men struggle to do. And other tipped workers—like car wash attendants and delivery workers—make even less.