This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate
Five state lawmakers, four of them women, served up food and drinks for an hour on Friday morning at Blue Plate Kitchen in West Hartford, one of my regular local eateries. Their goal: to call attention to the struggles of restaurant servers, largely women, under the state’s so-called sub-minimum wage for tipped employees, $6.38 an hour.
They might earn less than that as Connecticut legislators and they don’t even collect tips except for the sage advice of lobbyists, but that’s a different column. On Friday, the five toiled through breakfast to support a bill at the state Capitol that would end the sub-min-wage in favor of the regular minimum wage for all servers and bartenders.
That’s $14 an hour, heading up to $15 on June 1, and of course, tips would add to the servers’ earnings. Many restaurants, and the association that represents them, say raising the base is an expense the industry, and its customers, can’t bear even in good times – let alone when the pandemic’s shock to food establishments still reverberates.
Supporters say the “One Fair Wage” system, in place in seven red and blue states -- California, Alaska, Minnesota, Montana, Washington, Oregon and Nevada -- brings justice and stability to the server workforce, which numbers about 70,000 in Connecticut. And they say that contrary to the cries of the Connecticut Restaurant Association and its national umbrella group, ending the sub-minimum wage is...
North Korea on Sunday rejected US allegations of cybercrimes originating from there, calling them "absurd slander" and denying it poses a cyber threat, state media KCNA reported. In 2024, a United...