Workers Who Earn Tips Could Lose Thousands of Dollars Each Year in Rep bil

[Omaha Steve]

Full article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/01/workers-who-earn-tips-could-lose-thousands-of-dollars-each-year-in-republican-bill/

Workers Who Earn Tips Could Lose Thousands of Dollars Each Year in Republican Bill

It’s bad enough that House Republicans used a cynical legislative move to defuse the minimum wage issue—a hot potato for them in upcoming elections—by coupling a raise in the federal minimum wage with a $753 billion estate tax cut for millionaires.

(This week, probably Friday, if enough sensible senators put a stop to the millionaire tax giveaway, Republicans will attempt to twist that into a vote against the minimum wage.)

But digging deeper into the bill shows the legislation is even worse than it first appears. The bill the House passed in the early morning hours July 29 actually will cut the wages of millions of workers who earn tips along with their hourly wages. That pay cut could be as much as $5.50 an hour, the Economic Policy Institute reports.

Here’s how it works. Under current federal law, employers do not have to pay the full minimum wage of $5.15 to workers who earn tips—bartenders, waiters and waitresses, hotel maids, hair dressers, parking attendants and dozens of other categories of tipped workers. Employers can pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour and then claim that tips make up the difference between the $2.13 and $5.15 an hour. That’s called the trip credit.

But current law also says states may overrule the federal tip credit and require employers to pay the minimum wage, either the federal rate or a higher state minimum wage. For example, in Washington state, tipped workers earn the state minimum of $7.63 an hour plus tips. Tipped workers in Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada and Oregon also receive the full minimum wage with their tips.

The Republican estate tax bill takes away the power of the states to require employers to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage plus tips.

Another part of the H.R. 5970 tip credit provision prohibits states from trying to restore parity between tipped and nontipped workers. Under the bill, if states want to require employers to pay more than $2.13 an hour to tipped workers, they would have to allow a tip credit under state law. That means the state would have to freeze the wage requirement that employers have to pay at its current level, so employers don’t have to pay higher cash wages when the minimum wage is increased.

Thus, H.R. 5970 cuts pay for tipped workers and then prohibits states from restoring those pay cuts all the way.

[Erika]

1. The Republiacan way, hit the little guy to benefit the rich

And they call themselves Christians? I don't quite think so.

[AzDar]

2. Kick for the working man/woman.... n/t

:kick:

[Tesla]

3. kick!

[N90ATC]

5. Amazing!

How many more abuses can be heaped on workers? And what about states' rights?

[ThomCat]

4. It's amazing how many people are officially supposed to

live off of tips in shitty, poorly run little businesses where nobody in their right mind would leave much of a tip. The owners clearly don't care. They refuse to invest the money to make the business high-scale enough to bring in good tips, so they suck all the money upward and the employees live on less than minimum wage.
:grr:

[mom cat]

6. They stay up all night just trying to figure out how to screw the little

guy. :grr: