Mel Nichols, a 37-year-old bartender in Phoenix, Arizona, takes home anywhere from $30 to $50 an hour with tips included. But the uncertainty of how much she’s going to make on a daily basis is a constant source of stress.
“For every good day, there’s three bad days,” said Nichols, who has been in the service industry since she was a teenager. “You have no security when it comes to knowing how much you’re going to make.”
The amount tipped workers make varies by state. Fourteen states pay the federal minimum, or just above $2 an hour for tipped workers and $7 an hour for non-tipped workers.
A living wage fixes all those problems. It not only fills in the hole where those “rare” servers don’t bring in enough to even cover minimum wages, but gives the worker in any job the power to choose to work or not. The employer has to make the job more attractive to bring them in. Anyone who says that’s going to be hard for the employer…that’s exactly what they want to you say.