Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Minimum wage increase

I heard on the radio this morning that the minimum wage here in the US is now up $0.70 to $5.85. That’s great for people that are in jobs making only minimum wage. However, I read that due to this increase that restaurants will be raising their prices to offset costs (as will some other places). I’m kind of confused by this since the majority of employees at restaurants are servers and they do not get paid minimum wage since they get tips. When I worked in a restaurant about 10 years ago the hourly rate was $2.15.

I think when servers have to do their side work and silverware rolling that they should make minimum wage as they cannot be earning tips during that time. And that time spent not earning tips decreases your hourly average.

Yesterday I was reading what some of the presidential candidates think should happen in regards to minimum wage. Obama thinks that it should be raised to $9.00. I think that is a ridiculous idea. The only other person quoted in the interview was John Edwards, who thinks that the minimum wage should be on a sort of sliding scale that goes up and down with various factors. I think that’s pretty ridiculous too as you cannot lower someone’s wage which it sounds like would be part of this plan. I can’t offer any better idea, but I do find those ones a bit silly.

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