The business reporter for The Valley News recently did a story about minimum wage changes in the works in Vermont and New Hampshire legislatures. Both states have Democratic majorities with GOP governors who oppose hikes. In 2018 Vermont Governor Scott vetoed a minimum wage increase.
The focus of the VNews article is on “tipped” service workers that are allowed to be paid lower minimum wages than other workers and in theory can make up the difference in gratuities.
At issue in both states are changes to the overall minimum wage and possible hikes to the minimum for tipped workers. Currently: In New Hampshire, the minimum wage for employees who earn more than $30 per month through tips — known as the “tipped minimum wage” — is 45% of the applicable $7.25 per hour minimum wage, or $3.27 per hour.
In Vermont, tipped minimum wage for employees who earn more than $120 per month from tips is 50% of the applicable $10.78 per hour minimum wage, or $5.39 per hour.
Both states have written into their rules that if a server’s tip income falls below the general wage floor then the employer is required to pay the difference to bring the server up to the general per-hour minimum wage.
While that may seem to paint a bleak picture for the waitstaff’s income, the opposite is often true. As a rule, servers are the highest-paid non-management employees in the restaurant business.
Included are quote and comments from Governor Sununu’s office (who opposes any change) and a representative of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce (a group that has opposed hikes in the past). The reporter also wrangled a couple comments from two high-end pub/restaurant-business owners (who presumably oppose changes). And finally he chatted to three servers who work for tips in the same prosperous local establishments. No comments by low-end tipped workers, a legislative sponsor, or an economist are included.
If the article had included a supporter of the changes, they might have related a less rosy picture of the current situation … the negative points most people working at a sub-minimum wage for tips experience. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in 2018: that in states that have a lower tipped minimum wage [such as Vermont and New Hampshire] , tipped workers have worse economic outcomes and higher poverty rates than their counterparts in equal treatment states (regular state minimum wage plus tips, the law in eight states).
Now, to be fair I have to assume all the newly elected legislators from New Hampshire and Vermont Democratic majorities who support minimum wage hikes were reluctant to talk to the newspaper. Because otherwise the VNews business reporter would have managed to include a quote from one or even two of them…wouldn’t he?
