RAISE THE TIPPED MINIMUM WAGE! $2.13 is NOT enough!

The federal tipped minimum wage continues to be atrociously low at $2.13/hour.  For twenty years now, tipped workers in the restaurant industry and elsewhere have toiled for a miserable wage, in part due to the fact that restaurant workers have not had a voice. As a result, waiters and waitresses have three times the poverty rate of the rest of the United States workforce, and more than half of all restaurant workers live below the federal poverty line for a family of three.

Now you can make a difference!  In Spring 2011, Rep. Donna Edwards (MD) introduced the WAGES Act, the first bill ever introduced into Congress focused on tipped workers. This bill would make significantly close the wage gap that currently exists between tipped employees and all other workers. The WAGES Act would do this in 3 steps:

• It would raise the minimum wage of tipped employees from the current level of $2.13 per hour to $3.75 per hour 90 days after enactment.
• It would then raise the minimum wage of tipped employees to $5.00 per hour one year after enactment.
• Finally, two years after enactment, the tipped minimum wage would be increased to 70% of minimum wage, but no less than $5.50 per hour.

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Now that you are ready to take action, please choose from one of the three levels below to get started:

1. Send a letter to your Member of Congress
2. Start a ROC STAR in your community. ROC STARs are local committees of restaurant workers in communities where there is no ROC Affiliate, that focus on policy advocacy and consumer education. Learn more about what ROC STARs do and how to start one by emailing us!