TRENTON – The National Employment Law Project today hailed the Assembly Labor Committee’s release of a bill that calls for increasing the wages for employees of jobs that are largely reliant on tips.
The committee voted 6-to-2 to establish a minimum wage for tipped workers such as waitresses, carwash attendants and nail salon workers.
“We applaud the New Jersey Assembly Labor Committee’s leadership in moving to fix this unfair loophole, which is a big part of the reason tipped workers have triple the poverty rate of the workforce as a whole,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
“More than 70 percenet of tipped workers are women. So fixing the tipped minimum wage is also a key step for gender equity and helping working women in this tough economy.”
Unlike New Jersey, 42 other states provide a minimum wage for tipped workers. Seven of these states require that tipped workers be paid the full minimum wage, with any tips received being in addition to, not instead of, the wage paid by their employer.
Federal law also provides a minimum wage for tipped workers, but it has been frozen at $2.13 per hour for more than 20 years. New Jersey workers that are covered by the federal law receive this $2.13 minimum wage.
The bill’s release comes just a couple of weeks after another committee released bills calling for increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50.
Earlier story:
Minimum wage for tipped workers would increase under bill
