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Last year, Gov. Mark Dayton and the DFL-led Legislature were successful in increasing the state’s minimum wage – impacting the lives of thousands of Minnesotans and their families and pumping more money into the economy.

The GOP-led House is looking to repeal, lower and freeze the minimum wage for tipped workers. If workers average more than $4/hour in tips, their base wage would be cut to the current minimum wage of $8/hour. That wage is set to increase Aug. 1 to $9/hour and then increase again next year to $9.50/house. Freezing tipped workers at $8/hour would leave thousands of workers behind.

While servers can make above the minimum wage, most are NOT employed in expensive restaurants. The median wage for servers in Minnesota before the 2014 increase (including tips) was $8.68 per hour (or app. $18,000 per year). States with tip penalties have a higher poverty rates for servers. Restaurant servers, the largest group of tipped employees, experience poverty at nearly three times the rate of the workforce as a whole. It’s simply wrong for anyone who works full-time to live in poverty.

No matter what supporters call this, it’s a tip penalty and tips should be used to reward a worker for good service, not as an excuse for employers to pay workers less. Women hold most of the jobs that are affected by the minimum wage. About 70 percent of servers are women. In Minnesota, women lose nearly $8 billion per year due to the pay gap. We need to eliminate the pay gap, not grow it. 

The two state items in today’s DFL Monday Memo show the stark contrast between DFL and Republican legislators. While Republicans continue to making working people the enemy, DFLers will continue to fight for the Working Parents Act and to see that everyone has the opportunity to take part in Minnesota’s economic recovery.  

GOP war on the Middle Class · wage reduction

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