PROVIDENCE — In those corners of the Rhode Island work-world where employees rely on tips, the minimum an employer is required to pay is $3.89 an hour.
The assumption: waiters, waitresses and other "tipped employees" make at least as much — if not more — with gratuities as they would if R.I. guaranteed them the same $12.25 an hour, $490 a week, $25,480 a year minimum wage as other 40-hour-a-week employees.
But it doesn't always work out that way.
State lawmakers were confronted last week with the backstory for tipped workers both nationally and locally in jobs where:
• The "management requires women in tipped occupations to wear suggestive or sexually revealing uniforms."
• A complaint could cost them their jobs.
• Some employers simply ignore the law requiring them to make up the difference if an employee's tips and wages fall short of the $12.25 "minimum" wage for all other workers.
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The reliance on tips also "forces its overwhelmingly female workforce to [confront] endless sexism and harassments," said advocate Jordan Goyette, speaking on behalf of Reclaim RI. "All because smiling and playing nice means the difference between whether they have the money to pay the babysitter when they get home that night."
R.I.'s tip wage was last raised on Jan. 1, 2017, when it went up to $3.89 an hour.
At a House Labor Committee hearing last week, Rep. Leonela Felix — the sponsor of the legislation...
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