Restaurants: Minimum wage should include tips

HELENA – Citing rising costs and dwindling diners, Montana restaurant owners rallied today to support a bill that would that would allow them to pay servers less than the minimum wage.

Senate Bill 253, sponsored by Sen. Donald Steinbeisser, R-Sidney, would allow employers to count an employee’s tips toward the minimum wage - if and when that wage tops $6.90 an hour.

Critics said the measure would hurt Montana’s poorest workers, but Brad Griffin, representing the Montana Restaurant Association, said continual cost-of-living increases in the minimum wage are impossible to absorb in a tough economy.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the restaurant industry in Montana is suffering,” Griffin said. “We just need a breather.”

Griffin also said waiters and waitresses are typically the highest paid staff in the restaurant and should not get required raises when they are making more per hour with tips anyway. A “tip credit” would allow restaurants to stay in business, he said.

Montana’s minimum wage is scheduled to increase from $6.90 an hour to $7.25 in July. Supporters of the bill want tips to cover the extra 35 cents an hour.

In 2006, Montanans approved an initiative that raises or drops the minimum wage every year, depending on the national inflation figuers. Soon after the initiative passed, the federal government passed a similar law. Montana’s minimum wage changes every six months.

Steinbeisser also presented Senate Bill 254, which would remove Montana’s mandatory minimum wage increase based on cost of living.

Supporters included restaurant owners and representatives of several national chains, including Outback Steakhouse, Applebee’s, Perkins, Famous Dave’s, Pizza Hut. The Bozeman and Great Falls Chambers of Commerce also supported the bill.

Opponents argued that tips are the employee’s property and restaurant owners have no right to ask customers to subsidize their employees’ wages.

Rachel Conn, a waitress and sous-chef at Benny’s Bistro in Helena, said even with tips added to her minimum wage she can barely pay her bills and have enough for her emergency savings fund.

“In these hard economic times, we will never do better if we pay less,” Conn told the Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee. “I am a good employee. My work and the work of my fellow employees should be valued.

Opponents included unions, the Montana Human Rights Network, waitresses and baristas. The Montana Department of Labor and Industry and Gov. Brian Schweitzer also opposed the bill.

-by CNS correspondent Molly Priddy