A First For Tipped Workers Was Part Of What Passed The House Yesterday

by Eva Putzova
Candidate for Congress (AZ-01)

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the historic Raise the Wage Act (H.R.582). It is the first time in the history of this country that either chamber of Congress has passed legislation that guarantees tipped workers the same minimum wage as everybody else in the country.

In my day job, I work for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United-- a grassroots organization that fights to improve wages and working conditions for the nearly 14 million restaurant workers. I have heard so many stories from our members describing their struggle to make ends meet, their dependency on tips forcing them to tolerate sexual harassment, and their wages and tips being stolen. And indeed, the restaurant industry is the single largest source of sexual harassment and has a wage and hour non-compliance rate of 84 percent.

With the vote in Congress, people working in tipped professions as servers, busers, nail salon workers-- most of them women and many people of color and immigrants are for the first time recognized (at least by one legislative chamber) as workers worth the full minimum wage with tips on top.

Across the nation, 29 states and 42 cities have already raised the minimum wage locally. In Flagstaff, Arizona, I led a successful local citizen initiative raising our minimum wage to $15 by 2021 and the exploitative subminimum tipped wage to the full minimum wage by 2026.

While there’s enormous support for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, my opponent-- a blue Dog Democrat (former Republican state legislator Tom O'Halleran)-- contemplated a lower regional minimum wage for people in the southern states. In the end, he weakened this historic legislation through an amendment, allowing Congress to delay or otherwise modify scheduled increases based on their interpretation of findings of a study the same amendment requires. How many times in the past did the Blue Dog Coalition proposed amendments to study the economic impact of other policies on workers’ income and standard of living? Never.

Raising the minimum wage doesn’t hurt jobs. We’ve raised the minimum wage in cities and states across the country and study after study shows no long-term negative impact on employment. The most reputable economists agree that a $15 minimum wage would boost the economy and raise individual income for millions of people. Since increasing the minimum wage in Flagstaff, the most vocal opposition-- the restaurant industry-- saw an increase of 15 percent in total sales. Not only there was no decrease in the economic activity, the industry grew while people in the lowest paid professions got a small boost in their pay.

But this is more than just an economic justice issue. Nearly 40 percent of women of color would see a raise with the federal minimum wage going up. When you look at the map of the tipped wage rates by state, you’ll see that the states that pay their tipped workers $2.13 are mostly southern states with a disproportionally larger population of people of color. And indeed, the subminimum tipped wage has its roots in slavery. At Emancipation, the railroad industry and restaurant lobby demanded the right to hire newly freed slaves and not pay them anything, having them depend entirely on customer tips. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 codified this racist practice into law, carrying this legacy of exploitation into the modern era.

A quick history of the Federal tipped wage:

1938: $0
1966: At $0.63, for the first time more than $0 and pegged to 50% of the regular minimum wage.
1991: $2.13
1996: The "other" NRA chaired by Herman Cain successfully separated the tipped wage from the minimum wage-- no longer pegged to the minimum wage.
2019: $2.13

The vote in the U.S. House is truly historic and it deserves recognition. More than 200 members of Congress co-sponsored the Raise the Wage Act. We need the Senate to follow in their footsteps and do what’s been long overdue.