Attack of the Wage-Eating Monsters, Part II

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/04/11/attack-of-the-wage-eating-monsters-part-ii/

Attack of the Wage-Eating Monsters, Part II

by Mike Hall, Apr 11, 2007

The politicians and business groups who fight so fiercely against minimum wage workers resemble the zombies from the “Night of the Living Dead.” No matter how many times you whack off an arm or put a stake through their hearts, they keep coming back. Last seen in Montana, opponents of state increases in the minimum wage now have popped up in Missouri.

With the backing of the Missouri Restaurant Association and other business groups, state legislators are using what was supposed to a simple adjustment to the state’s new minimum wage law regarding overtime pay for firefighters and police officers to ban tipped workers from getting a raise and to eliminate the law’s annual cost of living adjustment.

The move follows a campaign by workers and the public in which they successfully urged Gov. Matt Blunt (R) to reverse his own Department of Labor’s ruling on the minimum wage increase. The wage boost, which Missouri voters approved by a 76 percent margin in November, raises the hourly wage from $5.15 to $6.50 and ensures the cost of living adjustment (COLA).



Prior to the passage of the Missouri ballot initiative, tipped workers were covered by the federal minimum wage law. As such, nearly all tipped workers in Missouri were entitled to a cash wage of only $2.13 per hour, which is the cash wage for tipped workers set at the federal level.

The new state law, which now covers tipped workers, says those workers must be paid 50 percent of the minimum wage with tips making up the difference—$3.25 an hour plus tips. But the state Labor Department initially ruled the new measure did not apply to workers who earn tips and said employers only had to pay workers $2.13 an hour.

Having lost that fight, Republican lawmakers now have added the tipped worker exclusion and COLA elimination to the first responders’ overtime bill.

FULL article at link.