A recent U.S. Labor Department blog post re-casts the agency's
long-running campaign against an alleged "subminimum wage for
tipped workers" under the federal Fair Labor Standards
Act. Although this latest pitch introduces a different
phrase, USDOL also recycles last year's
canard that "[t]he current federal tipped minimum wage
. . . still stands at just $2.13 per hour."
USDOL's premise was and
continues to be flatly untrue. There is no
"subminimum wage for tipped workers" under the
FLSA. It is not so that the "current federal
tipped minimum wage" is $2.13 per hour, and it never has
been.
One More Time . . .
We have pointed out before that the
FLSA's minimum wage for tipped employees is exactly the same as
for all other non-exempt workers: $7.25 an hour at present.
Under today's version of the FLSA's 50-year-old
"tip credit" provision, the $2.13-per-hour figure is
simply the lowest cash wage that may be paid to a tipped
employee, provided that the
