Minimum Wage for Tipped Employees Remains Pitifully Low
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Feb 10, 2010
Rep. Bagby (D-Rawlins) introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage for tipped employees from $2.13 an hour to $5.00. He brought this last year and it failed and the same with this year. Three Republicans stood up in opposition and said things like: “If a waitress is making $100/hour in tips why would we want to pay her more on top of that?” Find me a Wyoming waitress that made that much money in an hour, consistently. There isn’t one. Find me one that makes $20 an hour consistently. There isn’t one. Sure there are good nights during a big event (Frontier Days, Jubilee Days, State Fair) when tipped employees have a really good showing. I was a waitress and made great money on UW football game days, but in general my job was barely paying my rent. I was a single college student. How do single mothers with two children do it? I know; they go get another job.
National average income for tipped employees, according to the National Employment Law Project NELP the minimum wage for waitress (nationally and in Wyoming) hasn’t been raised since 1996. They also tell me, in a report published in 2009 that nationally 28% of waiters and waitresses are male and 72% are female, yet on average the male makes $0.70 more per hour. From NELP, “Tipped workers nationwide earn a median wage of $8.23 per hour including tips, or just $17,118 annually.” Take a second to think about that. Now think about how we are only offering $2.13 an hour for our tipped employees and are surely below this average $8.23 per hour.
Another tried and true response (favorite of the restaurant/hotel association) is this is valuable income and will put our business under. I’m not buying it. In 29 states tipped employees make better wages than the lowest bar set by the federal government. In Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Montana, Alaska and Minnesota they make exactly the same as the state’s non-tipped employees. I worked in Montana as a waitress this summer and the difference it made was dramatic. You don’t see these businesses going under. Also, the NELP study tells me studies show that raising minimum wage for tipped workers raises their living standard without costing jobs or slowing business growth.
What a disappointment. On the bright side, not a single Democrat voted in opposition and we should give them a huge thank you for that. It is nice to know there is some unity and support for the working people of Wyoming in the legislature. The Republican’s who voted in opposition need to speak to waitresses in Torrington, Lyman, Kaycee, and Worland. They will soon find out a very different reality than the one they portrayed.
If you would like to check out the NELP study it can be found at http://bit.ly/ajang8.