Gov. Tom Wolf finally overcame eight years of blind legislative obstruction Monday when the Independent Regulatory Review Commission approved a long-overdue policy to raise wages for tipped workers.
Coupled with an equally welcome change in federal labor policy recently announced by the Biden administration, tipped workers can expect higher wages and fairer treatment.
Under a rule first adopted 45 years ago, in 1977, a worker needed to earn only $30 a month in tips to enable his employer to reduce his pay below the minimum wage. Currently, the reduction is from the state’s embarrassingly low minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to the “tipped-worker rate” of just $2.83 an hour. Under the new regulation, an employer could not impose the tipped rate until a worker earns at least $135 in tips in a given month.
The new regulation also better regulates compensation for tipped workers on fluctuating schedules, and precludes owners from deducting service fees from workers’ tips when customers pay those tips by credit card.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has restored a labor rule regarding tipped workers that had been eliminated by the Trump administration. The “80/20” rule holds that if more than 20% of a worker’s time is spent on duties that do not generate tips, the worker must be paid at least the minimum wage for all of his work.
All five members of the state commission, three Democrats and two Republicans, voted for the new Pennsylvania regulation. But Commissioner John Soroko expressed concern, noting that the restaurant industry faces a tough road out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
”I have to say maybe this is the case of the right idea at the wrong time,” he said.
The problem in Pennsylvania, though, is that it’s never the right time to boost workers’ fortunes. Republican majorities in the state Legislature steadfastly have refused to raise the minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since Congress adopted that rate in 2007. They continue to predict economic calamity will result from an increase, even though every other state in the Northeast has raised the minimum wage without experiencing the predicted doom.
The new tipped-worker regulation should be just the beginning of greater economic justice for low-wage workers in Pennsylvania.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre (TNS)
