Higher minimum wage doesn’t benefit everyone

The hike in New York’s minimum wage that took effect last Monday is welcome news to most — but not all — of the laborers on the lowest rungs of the state’s employment ladder. So-called “tipped workers” — waitstaff, hotel housekeepers and the like — continue to be paid well below the new $8.75-an-hour bar.

Such employees are paid between $5 and $5.65 an hour, with tips expected to make up the difference. It’s an arbitrary and anachronistic system that not only insults the dignity of an estimated 229,000 such workers in New York, but makes it nigh on impossible for them to budget predictably. It must be changed.

Fortunately, a state review board that met last week acknowledged the problem. Unfortunately, that three-member group, the state Wage Board, recommended a revised minimum salary that would still be nearly $2 an hour less than the state’s lowest legal wage.

The board dismissed proposals that would have raised the minimum for tipped workers to $8.75 an hour or, better yet, done away with the tipped wage altogether. Either move would have been preferable to the board’s ultimate proposal: raising the tipped wage to a still-measly $7 an hour.

The argument against doing away with a below-minimum wage is the usual: the increased cost of labor would hurt businesses, inflate prices for consumers and ultimately jeopardize positions. These concerns are not illegitimate, but they are overblown. The nation has just come off its best job-creating year since the 1990s. Both the economy and the employment market are particularly well positioned to absorb any job- or cost-related ripples.

The Wage Board, which held hearings on the issue last fall in western New York, is expected to make a recommendation next month to acting state Labor Commissioner, who has the final say.

The decision is obvious: nix the practice. After all, the tipped wage is inordinately unfair not only to women, who fill an estimated 70 percent of these types of service industry jobs, but to consumers, who, in essence, are expected to make up the difference between tipped salaries and the minimum wage.

The Wage Board’s recommendation is a slap in the face to service industry workers, but the Labor Department needn’t add injury to insult. Tips aside, no workers in New York should labor for less than the minimum wage.