The GOP Minimum Wage CUT Bill
In the cynical monstrosity that the GOP calls its "minimum wage" bill, most progressives have focused on the perversity of demanding a tax cut for Paris Hilton as the price for getting a minimum wage increase.
But progressives should be trumpeting that the bill will actually CUT wages for workers in a number of states by preempting state minimum wage laws for tipped workers. (Link and provision courtesy of the National Restaurant Association) So Paris Hilton's tax cut is going to be coming directly out of the lower wages for tipped workers in California and a number of others states.
Rick Santorum tried this gambit last year but now they've pushed it through and progressives should be highlighting the unprecedented nature of this assault on state minimum wage laws. Here's the deal:
The federal minimum wage is explicit that states and local governments are free to create higher minimum wage rates than the federal level for any and all groups of workers. While the federal minimum wage allows employers to pay a lower wage to tipped workers, a number of states have eliminated this so-called tip credit on the assumption that consumers pay tips not to subsidize low-wage employers but to actually reward service.
But the new House bill would preempt those state laws and actually cut wages for tipped workers in states like California, Oregon and Washington where tipped workers would see a lower minimum wage rate imposed compared to what they were guaranteed under state law.
This would be an unprecedented move by the federal government to preempt state minimum wage laws. Not only would it hurt tipped workers, it would set a precedent for conservatives to try to preempt all minimum wage rates higher than the federal level.
If that sounds too paranoid, consider this. after a number of cities began enacting city minimum wage laws, about a dozen southern and western states, including Florida, Louisiana and Georgia, passed legislation banning local governments from enforcing local minimum wages higher than the federal minimum wage level. Backed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, these "minimum wage repeal acts" are the model for the national GOP going further and preempting state minimum wage laws, just as they recently preempted state class action laws and just as they have preemped state health care and environmental regulation.
Progressives are actually winning a range of battles at the state level and conservatives are increasingly looking to use the federal government to shut those progressive state laws down. This new minimum wage cut for tipped workers is just one more shot in that attack.
This just highlights why progressives need stronger language to highlight a progressive vision of federalism, not one of "states rights" but that promotes substantive policy innovation at the state level, where the federal government provides for MINIMUM protections of workers and consumers while encouraging states to create stronger protections.
And this rightwing minimum wage attack on state laws protecting tipped workers should be one more example of what's wrong with the rightwing hypocrisy around federalism.
Comments (21)
This is so profoundly pathological I am absolutely speechless.
July 31, 2006 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for posting that. If the paper covered it, I read right past it, and it's definitely not being debated.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 31, 2006 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm astonished that this gets no attention. Is there no outrage? Are you all so well fed and content that you don't care?
I've known many waiters and waitresses in my life. It's not a fun job, or an easy one. Security is nonexistent, the pay is lousy (and in Canada, we don't have these punitive minimum wage exemptions), sexual harassment and abusive customers are common, and management abuse including sexual harassment, verbal abuse, excessive demands, shorting hours and other indignities is frequent. Every waitress I've known has stories of being jerked around and screwed over.
Minimum wage isn't a living wage, hell, it's hardly even subsistence. I knew plenty of people who worked minimum wages and had to go to food banks to make ends meet, who couldn't afford cars or apartments but wound up taking rooms, who couldn't afford basic dental care or medicines.
I cannot believe that the government of the Richest country in the world would go out of its way like this to screw around some of its most vulnerable workers.
What the fuck is wrong with America???
July 31, 2006 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect you might find out that the sub-sector of the tip employee that mostly gets tipped in cash (admittedly becoming smaller all the time as more and more services take credit cards) might not be all that interested in your agitation on this, might not care that much.
Why? Well, if you get tipped in cash, the way it works in most states is that all you have to do is claim enough of those tips every week on your time card to make up something around regular minimum wage. And that's the amount that the employer deducts taxes from. The rest is yours tax-free.
While most people doing this are part-time or still low enough income that they would not to have to pay federal income tax if they claimed everything, they still like not having to pay FICA or state taxes on those tips.
I know, I did it all through 8 years of college and grad school at waitress jobs. (They were never fancy places, but it cash-oriented places. I paid most of my college expenses working weekends and summers, didn't come out with that much debt.) While most in the food service business can't do that anymore because of credit card tipping, ask any hotel bellhop, maid or doorman, valet parker, delivery person of any kind, chauffeur license holder, corner bar bartender, hair care or casino worker whether they claim all their cash tips or whether they just claim enough to make it look a little over minimum wage.
It's tax evasion, but it's also almost an accepted, ingrained thing in certain cultures, like New York City, for instance; lots of these jobs are passed around to families and friends. They don't care much what the minimum wage is, it's the cash tips. Granted, it's only a certain type of job where this happens, but there's more of this type of thing going on then people might think. It is ths same as the "nanny problem," in that's it's not a good thing for those that get stuck in it long-term, and don't plan for their own future, as they are not paying into SSI, there is no security, income fluctuates, etc., but there's a lot of people out there who prefer the part-cash job the way it is at a certain point in their lives for one reason or another. And I even know a few college-educated that have actually chosen it long-term, feeling they are smart enough to plan for their own future, and not into a more "regular, respectable" fully tax-paying job.
July 31, 2006 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
P.S. Some day I'd like to see the figures for value of money orders sold by the U.S.P.S. I see a lot of sales of them in my local Bronx station while I stand in line, and they're not for small amounts. I don't buy that they are all people that can't afford or handle a checking account. I think many are people that don't want to use a checking account because it has to have a social security number associated with it.
July 31, 2006 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I can't say when your waitress jobs are or were. Obviously, it was working for you in those days.
Most people waiting tables are not on the University or Grad school circuit, and frankly, I find it difficult to imagine anyone managing to work their way through grad school on minimum wages, or minimum + tip wages.
The waiters and waitresses that I knew socially, the cab drivers, the service people were of all ages. Many of them did not have the enriched opportunities that would allow them to go to grad school.
You ever see the 'Fisher King', Terry Gilliam directed, Robin Williams starring? There's an evocative scene where Jeff Bridges, finally on the road back to recovery, is talking with some TV producers, and they've got a great idea for a series: A show about street people. But not the dirty, downtrodden, fractured people of reality. These are street people by choice, happy free spirits making their own rules, stepping out of society, yadda yadda yadda. In the context of the movie of course, wherein Gilliam has gone out of his way to show people downtrodden, broken and in pain, the clueless hypocrisy of the producers is breathtaking.
Please, rest assured, the next time I am travelling in the United States, I'll take more time out to talk to the waiters and waitresses, cab drivers, bellhops, maids, parking attendants and ask them about their feelings and experience about minimum and sub-minimum wages, taxes and tipping. I'll ask if they're in graduate school, if they have the luxury of working weekends only, about making a living and how hard or easy it is. I'm sure it will make for interesting conversations, and you might even be right. On the other hand, it might well be that things have changed a bit.
I don't know, though, there's something about your reply that made my skin crawl quite viscerally. I caught a glimpse of that empty inhumanity which forms one of those hidden ugly parts of the American character. It's moments like this that I appreciate just how different you and your people are from me and mine. I'm not saying this to condemn or offend you, I'm just acknowledging the creepiness that you, doubtless unintentionally, inspired.
That being said, I think you for your honesty, and for the perspectives displayed in your post.
July 31, 2006 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
U.S.P.S. money orders? I really don't understand that reference.
In Canada, we're seeing a proliferation of money marts, cheque cashing and payday loan operations, which provide the equivalent of small sum banking or credit services to the poor for extraordinary interest/service charges. Is that what you are talking about?
July 31, 2006 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our postal service sells very inexpensive money orders, up to $1,000 value limit, but you can buy more than one of those, (I don't know how many.) The fee is around $1.00 for $1,000, much less for lower amounts. Is nothing new, has been for a long time. No i.d. required to purchase, and the recipient can get cash at their own Post Office if desired, or treat it like a check and deposit it.
(BTW, before Paypal was created, virtually everyone selling on Ebay demanded them for immediate shipment of purchasing goods after suffering bounced checks. Not to mention, once again: no mysterious deposit in your checking acount if you go pick up the cash.)
As check cashing type places, in the U.S., yes of course we have them, they are infamous signs of a poor and/or immigrant neighborhoods, so much so that some say a neighborhood has gentrified when they disappear. They compete with the Post Office because they offer services besides money orders--yes, cash that check, but many are also immigrant-oriented, speaking the lingo, can arrange travel, visa advice, shipping to home country, fill out tax forms, offer internet for those that don't have it, pay the utllities directly when you're late, translate letter, transfer money overseas (which anyone who has to do this through an actual bank know is no frigging bargain at a bank, either,) even sometimes explain the mysteries of local government.
July 31, 2006 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mho, you would be better off placing more of that sympathy towards those that cannot accept tips, the minimum wage fast food workers, those working that very dangerous night shift at the 7-Eleven gas station for minimum wage, the laundromat workers, the dishwashers. Those who cannot accept tips and make only the minimum wage are the ones suffering the most, as are illegal immigrants who are paid only cash because they cannot do anything else, which is often below minimum wage.
BTW my own "perspective" comes from paying my own entire way through state school, including my own living expenses, one parent the first in his family to get a college education, via the G.I. bill the other with none ever having gone to college. It took me 8 years because I couldn't go to grad school full-time and work enough to pay bills and eat, you have roommates to help pay the rent in the cheap neighborhood, of course.
July 31, 2006 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was the first in my family to ever obtain a post-secondary education, and I worked and lived like a dog for it. I certainly would not denigrate your accomplishment.
July 31, 2006 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gerrymandering and a strange admiration for all things British, here, first past the post elections.
July 31, 2006 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nah, I think its something deeper and weirder than that. There's something strange and deeply askew in the American psyche, a lot of people who travel to the states notice it.
Americans can be sweet people. They can be kind and generous, openhearted, thoughtful, talented, gifted. I'm proud to call Americans friends.
But there's something odd about you. There's strange glimpses of something truly disturbing.
I don't know, it may be a historical thing. Perhaps the fact that you murdered and stole your way across the Continent, all but eradicating the original people in order to 'self create' yourselves. Or maybe it's the innate historical cruelty of slavery. Perhaps its simply isolation.
But whatever it is, it's real.
I've read that 90% of the world's serial killers are white American males. I think that's the leading edge of it. It's the outer edge of the dark thing hidden in your nation.
But never mind me. It's late, and I'm tired and philosophical, never a good combination.
You're a swell people, and that's for sure. And if you got dark in you, well, there's lots of that everywhere in different kinds. You still got the freedom to choose, and the freedom to be the best that's in you to be.
July 31, 2006 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
My own experience with cash tipping, as a busboy in a $20/plate "supper club," ammounted to 5 or 10 bucks a night from the waitresses. I don't know whether they were stiffing the IRS or not, but I certainly hope they were stiffing me and not actually making that little.
Of course I benefited from the full minimum wage, not the waitress minimum: a whopping $3.35 an hour. Still, I made more money cutting my neighbors' lawns.
Sometimes I think the only sympathy waitresses (or any other low-wage workers) get from us wealthier professional types, comes from people who did those jobs in college. I've certainly seen my share of tables-for-eight demanding seperate checks and leaving not a penny more.
I've also known public schoolteachers who claim to make more money waiting tables. Which shows you how far the almighty Teacher's Union has to go in Right-to-Work (for crappy pay) Arizona.
The point is: raise the minimum wage for everyone, including waitresses. Just because a substandard minimum might be adequate for some people does not excuse it remaining substandard. What if my teacher friend married a doctor; should teachers be expected to give up 20 years worth of raises? Of course not.
--
-- All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. (John Kenneth Galbraith) --
August 1, 2006 1:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
The playing of political games with the minimum wage is pretty pathological too. I was born in the USA and see what you, Valdron, see. It is much larger than it was 30 years ago; it terrifies me. There is a profound decency in a majority of Americans, but it is eroding. I have seen individual people devolve from mildly conservative environmentalists to Rush Limbaugh spewing hatemongers. That is, of course, anecdotal evidence.
Gerrymandering, etc. is relevant, but I think that there is a middle ground between that and your (and my) fears of the dark side of the American psyche and such lighter causes. First and foremost is a willingness to allow hate speech to flourish on the public airwaves -- something that has not happened in Canada or in many other places. That is fertilizer for pathology, a dark side that likely exists in every nation.
The USA's dark side, that includes the wide willingness to ignore, put down and demonize the poor within the richest nation, is not necessarily worse than anyone else's, but it is more dangerous to the world as a whole given that the USA spends more on arms than the rest of the world put together. Why is that widely thought to be a good idea in the USA, given the other obvious needs.
I like to think that this will all be fixed in the next two election cycles, but I am far from sure yet that it will. Maybe I am just longing for the America that I grew up in a long time ago.
global citizen
August 1, 2006 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
T.Rollie Fisher
OK, I grew up in MN, near Canada. It was cold. America is getting ugly. I live in Japan now, but will move home soon. Should I move to Vancouver, BC? Is it more of a promised land and paradise than America has become? It sure looks inviting. Please let me know from your experience.
August 1, 2006 6:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Vancouver is getting really crowded. If you really must live on a coast, try Halifax or Victoria, smaller but utterly charming cities. Alberta is nice (Calgary sucks). Stay out of Sudbury, but apart from that, it's all good.
August 1, 2006 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the record, I'm not singling out America as innately or uniquely evil. Well, maybe uniquely evil.
But the British certainly have a closet full of atrocities and perversions, the Russian culture has its dark sides, as do the the Muslims. And hell, if you ever want to lose an afternoon, sit down and ask a Canadian what's wrong with Canada.
The American 'dark side' is unique in its particular character and quality, not in the mere fact of existing. It's disturbing in a people otherwise so bright and generous.
August 1, 2006 7:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I concur re: Vancouver but would add if you are a city person it is in many ways as good as they get, but expensive for housing. Halifax, Victoria: excellent. Small cities in Ontario: Kingston, Peterborough, Guelph, etc. all excellent and affordable places to live. Forty years now in Canada and no regrets.
global citizen
August 1, 2006 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Artappraiser, thank you for pointing this out. I routinely add the tip to my credit card charge in restaurants -- I try to tip high on the assumption that wait staff are not paid the minimum wage. From now on I will pay the tip in cash.
August 1, 2006 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
When I was in Atlanta, I found that they would build the tip into your bill and it would appear on the credit card.
August 1, 2006 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another reason (aside from Paris Hilton) to defeat this repugnant Republican bill. Thanks for pointing it out.
Tom
August 1, 2006 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink