For most restaurant-goers, the tip is nothing more than a nuisance, an additional cost above an already-expensive check.
But for the waiters who take the orders and bring the food, the tip is the principal means to survive.
The New York State Labor Department announced on Friday, July 24, that the minimum wage would rise from $7.15 to $7.25 an hour to comply with federal legislation. However, this increase does not cover tipped workers. For them, the federal minimum wage remained at $2.13 an hour and $4.60 an hour in New York State, the same the wage has been since 1991.
Due to inflation over the past 18 years, the real value of the tipped workers minimum wage actually fell 36 percent, reported the National Employment Law Project in (NELP). A NELP study entitled “Restoring the Minimum Wage for Tipped Workers” showed that many tipped workers – after paying taxes – have almost no regular salary left and subsist almost entirely on tips, even though their employees are required to cover the difference if the sum of their salaries and their tips does not reach the minimum wage.
“The problem is that the unpredictability [of the tips] makes it difficult for the workers to have a good idea of how much they’re going to make at the end of the day,” said Rajesh Nayak, a staff lawyer for NELP.
For that reason, NELP advocates for an increase in the federal minimum wage for tipped workers of at least 60 percent of the regular minimum wage. This percentage would equal what it was during the Reagan administration – generally recognized as a low-point for labor – which would be $4.35 an hour. Added with tips, the tipped workers, primarily waiters and waitresses but also bellboys and garage workers among others, would receive a bit more than the minimum wage in total.
“There will always be a little unpredictability, but unpredictability is better two or three dollars above the minimum wage,” Nayak said.
Andres Torres, a professor in the Center of Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College and director of the CUNY Initiative for Latino Studies Faculty, has a slightly different point of view about the role that these jobs play in the labor market. According to Torres, Latinos – in particular – make up almost 21 percent of all tipped workers and 15 percent of waiters and waitresses.
“The industries of restaurants and services are gateways into the labor market,” Torres said, despite the instability in those jobs to count on them for a career.
“If you’re raising a family, if you have kids dependent on you, then it would not be a stable situation for a household,” he explained. “A marginal change in your wages and the ripple effect from their tips are positive, but they’re parts of a long-term fight for their financial security and social survival.”
And, according to Torres, a hypothetical increase would only bring incremental and temporary benefits.
In the long run however, Nayak would like to see tipped workers receive the complete minimum wage – an initiative that Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington have already adapted. This way, workers in the rapidly-expanding industry of food service will be able to lead a middle-class existence.
“Giving them a minimum wage they can count on, plus tips, will bring more people to jobs with which they can care for a family,” said Nayak, based on observations from the seven states that have already implemented this practice.
Nicole Cummins, who has worked as a waitress for 15 years and now works at the Pizzeria Uno in Bayside, agreed.
“Especially during lunch, people don’t tip properly,” Cummins said. “They assume that we work on salary.”
She also said that her employer never paid for the difference when her total pay falls short of the minimum wage.
“They don’t make up anything,” she added. “And that’s anywhere.”
Tenzin Namgyal, manager of Tibet Kitchen on 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, recognized that at times tips aren’t enough for his waiters and waitresses.
“With the economy how it is now, people leave less tips,” he said. But at the same time, he said that the economy is affecting management significantly as well.
“Now, an increase in the minimum wage [for tipped workers] would hurt because business is bad,” he explained. He added that the sum of the wages and tips of his waiters always exceeds the $7.25 mark. “But when it gets better, that would be okay.”
