Some lawmakers want to fully eliminate the lower $5.55 rate for service staff after a legislative compromise in 2018 retained a separate minimum wage for tipped workers in Massachusetts.
"We know that the sub-minimum wage is certainly not sufficient. People just cannot live on that," Pittsfield Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier told GBH News. Her bill would align tipped workers' salaries with other workers' at $15 an hour by 2028, regardless of extra income they receive through tips.
Under Beacon Hill's 2018 "grand bargain" that set increases to the minimum wage, created a paid family leave program, enshrined an annual sales tax holiday and did away with overtime on Sundays for grocers, the wage floor for tipped workers was to rise to $6.75 per hour by 2023.
Farley-Bouvier's bill will be heard by the Labor Committee Tuesday. It would alter that bargain and increase the minimum wage for tipped workers by $1.50 each year until the rate is equal to the state's minimum wage for non-tipped workers, which would be at $15 an hour or higher.
Farley-Bouvier said one provision of the bill, allowing any tips to be shared not just with "front of house" service staff but with kitchen staff as well, will help restaurants attract workers at a time when the industry is desperate to fill jobs.
"By having one fair wage, they are actually able to share tips across the whole house. And I think that is a solution for employers in the service industry," Farley-Bouvier said.
Under the 2018 law, the minimum wage in Massachusetts will rise from $13.50 this year to $14.24 in 2022 before topping out at $15 an hour in 2023. If Farley-Bouvier’s bill were to become law, the tipped minimum wage would gradually increase between 2022 and 2028 until it reaches $15 per hour — or more, should lawmakers once again increase the wage floor in the intervening years.
The bill cleared the committee last October before being quietly shelved by Democratic leaders until the legislative session expired.
