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ProSense

(116,464 posts)
Mon Jan 27, 2014, 10:38 AM Jan 2014

Proposal to Raise Tip Wages Resisted

Proposal to Raise Tip Wages Resisted

By STEVEN GREENHOUSEJAN

Nearly 50 years ago, federal law created a lower minimum wage for workers who receive tips. Congress decreed that it could not be less than 50 percent of the federal minimum wage.

But when the minimum wage inched up — raised to $5.25 in 1996 under President Clinton — Congress agreed, in a concession to the restaurant industry, to let the 50 percent rule on tip wages lapse.

Currently under federal law, restaurant owners are required to pay a minimum of $2.13 an hour toward a waiter’s wages as long as customers’ tips lift the waiter’s pay to the $7.25 federal minimum wage. (If tips are too small to reach the minimum wage, then the restaurant is required to top off the waiter’s pay.)

Nineteen states use the federal $2.13 tip wage, while 24 states have set a subminimum tip wage above that. Seven other states, most of them in the West, require waiters’ base pay to be at least the state minimum wage. In Washington State, with the nation’s highest state minimum wage, that means a waiter’s base wage, before tips, is $9.32 an hour...now, as some Democratic senators and President Obama push to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from $7.25, they are also backing increases to the tip wage (at $2.13, it is 29 percent of the minimum wage). Once again, the restaurant industry is fiercely opposed to a mandated increase.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/business/proposal-to-raise-tip-wages-resisted.html

Corporate shills take aim at workers fighting for a living wage
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024357604

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Proposal to Raise Tip Wages Resisted (Original Post) ProSense Jan 2014 OP
Adding this: ProSense Jan 2014 #1
Time to eliminate the tip expectation seveneyes Jan 2014 #2
You're ProSense Jan 2014 #3
22 years since the last increase in minimum wage for tipped employees. That's not right. nt okaawhatever Jan 2014 #4
The current minimum wage is also a relic. n/t ProSense Jan 2014 #5

ProSense

(116,464 posts)
1. Adding this:
Mon Jan 27, 2014, 10:52 AM
Jan 2014
Obama weighing executive action on minimum wage?

By Greg Sargent

Here’s some welcome news. At his meeting with Democratic Senators last night, President Obama indicated that he is giving serious consideration to executive action designed to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors...Proponents want to see this executive action happen on the merits — they believe it could impact as many as two million employees of federal contractors, and would help the economy. But they also believe such action could give a boost of momentum to the push for a minimum wage hike for all American workers, which obviously would require Congressional approval, but is currently facing Republican opposition.

Senator Bernie Sanders told me in an interview that the president took the idea very seriously when asked about it last night.

“I am very pleased that the president and members of his administration indicated they’re giving very serious consideration to this proposal,” Sanders said. “The president is weighing the pros and cons in terms of the impact on the overall debate.”

Asked what “cons” the president had identified, Sanders declined to say, noting that this had been a private meeting. But it seems fair to speculate that Obama, like some others, could be worried that raising the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors could be counter-productive, sapping momentum in the broader debate over whether to raise the minimum wage for all workers, by allowing opponents to argue that some have already been helped.

- more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/16/obama-weighing-executive-action-on-minimum-wage/




 

seveneyes

(4,631 posts)
2. Time to eliminate the tip expectation
Mon Jan 27, 2014, 10:55 AM
Jan 2014

Businesses are using tips to subsidize their low server pay. Give all their employees a living wage and if customers wish to tip for extra service, then so be it. Just price the meals and service accordingly and let the tips fall where they may.

ProSense

(116,464 posts)
3. You're
Mon Jan 27, 2014, 10:59 AM
Jan 2014

"Give all their employees a living wage and if customers wish to tip for extra service, then so be it. Just price the meals and service accordingly and let the tips fall where they may."

...proposing increasing the minimum wage, and then ignoring this issue, leaving it unregulated. Not only that, but you're also suggesting that they jack up prices to do so.



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