THE WASHINGTON POST.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019EZ
8
Casual DiningBY TIM CARMAN
Y
ou may have missed this
news as President
Trump’s racist tweet-
storm rained down on the
Squad in July, but the U.S. House
of Representatives passed a bill
that would gradually raise the
federal minimum wage to $15 an
hour, the first increase for those
on the lowest rung of the U.S.
workforce since 2009. Tucked
into the legislation, however, was
something perhaps even more
startling: a measure that would
eliminate the sub-
minimum wage for tipped em-
ployees.
Media pundits and political
prognosticators alike predicted
that the Republican-controlled
Senate would never green light a
similar bill, and a recent report all
but confirmed the forecasts. Still,
the House vote was further evi-
dence that the United States is
losing its appetite for a lower
minimum wage for tipped work-ers, who can earn as little as $2.13
an hour with the expectation that
employers will make up the differ-
ence should tips not add up to the
full minimum wage in that partic-
ular jurisdiction.
Seven states, including Califor-
nia and Minnesota, already re-
quire the same minimum pay for
all workers, and other cities and
states have been flirting with sim-
ilar efforts to eliminate the two-
tiered system. Last year, a majori-
ty of voters in Washington passed
a ballot measure that would have
ended the sub-minimum wage for
tipped workers, but the D.C.
Council repealed Initiative 77
amid pressure from the restau-
rant industry, which predicted
doom and gloom should the law
take effect.
Restaurant Opportunities Cen-
ters United, the New York-based
organization behind many of
these campaigns for “one fair
wage,” has no plans to give up its
push to eliminate the lower mini-
mum wage, which the group saysleaves tipped workers vulnerable
to sexual harassment, wage theft
and other problems. These on-
going efforts may explain, in part,
why a reader recently posed the
following question to me:
If I’m in California, or if D.C.
ever raises the minimum wage for
tipped staff, do I still have to tip 20
percent?
Baked into that question, I
think, is the suggestion that if
restaurant servers earn the full
minimum wage, diners are some-
how off the hook when it comes to
tipping. It’s a legitimate perspec-
tive given that, for decades, diners
have been led to believe that tips
were not really discretionary but
mandatory. We were the ones,
after all, largely responsible for a
server’s pay. If that’s no longer the
case — and restaurateurs must
cover their own labor costs like,
you know, every other industry —
perhaps diners can ditch the cal-
culators and tipping apps and just
enjoy their meals.
It’s a valid take but not a partic-ularly charitable one to restau-
rant servers.
Think about this in terms of
other workers who provide a serv-
ice. Hotel cleaning crews. Mas-
sage therapists. Tattoo artists.
Cabdrivers (if not ride-hailing
drivers). Coffee shop baristas.
And on and on. They routinely
make at least the minimum wage,
and they routinely receive tips,
too. We tip these workers for vari-
ous reasons: We want to supple-
ment their (sometimes) modest
incomes. We want to reward their
excellent service. We want to sup-
port a local business.
The same motivations would
hold true for restaurant servers
and busers, even if they were paid
the full minimum wage. Why
would we want to punish some of
the hardest workers in the hospi-
tality industry — people who han-
dle every person who enters the
dining room, no matter how insuf-
ferable or entitled — just because
we had previously been required
SEE CASUAL ON 9Taking tips out of minimum wage debate
Customers
shouldn’t reduce
amounts they
leave, even if
servers’ hourly
wages rise
SCOTT SUCHMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTServers, like Chad
Creason at Vermilion,
above, devote themselves
to the study of wine,
cuisine, hospitality,
history and more. These
employees deserve tips
and patronage, if only to
reinforce the idea that
restaurant service is a
profession, not a way
station to a better job.