Bill Under Consideration Could Impact Restaurant Workers

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Updated: 9:30 PM Feb 17, 2012

A new bill under consideration in the Florida Senate could give a boost to local restaurants, but critics say that boost will come at the expense of employees who work for tips.

Posted: 5:44 PM Feb 17, 2012
Reporter: Sandra Osborne
Email Address: sandra.osborne@wjhg.com

Florida Senate Wants Tips Employees To Take A 50% Reduction in Minimum Wage');">

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Panama City- A new bill under consideration in the Florida Senate could give a boost to local restaurants, but critics say that boost will come at the expense of employees who work for tips.

The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association lobbied to the senate to consider this bill.

It includes an option for restaurants to cut tipped workers’ minimum wages in half.

The cuts proposed in the bill have a lot of employees concerned, saying they’re already impacted by the bad economy.

“I have between 20 and 40 dollars a day less. If people are making less money, they’re not going to spend as much money,” said Alexis Archer, a server in Panama City Beach.

The legislation would give employers the option to lower tipped workers’ minimum wage from the state standard of $4.65 an hour to $2.13.

“If you have sixty servers working for you, like we do, and every one of them went up a dollar per hour just a year ago, and then another 30 cents and another 50 cents, it’s really impacting us,” said Jack Bishop a restaurant owner in Panama City Beach.

The bill is aimed at helping keep restaurants afloat during these troubled times, but not all workers agree with the idea saying the extra guaranteed two dollars per hour, make a difference.

“It’s an extra 300-400 dollars a month just from the paycheck. If it was to drop, that’d definitely be a big impact on it,” said Archer.

The idea is for workers to make at least an average of $9.98 an hour.
If workers make more, they could have their hourly pay cut.
Those that make less, could receive a little more.

“The bill is really to hold it steady. It’s not so much to roll back the clock as much as it is to hold it so that we don’t have this appreciation every year,” said Bishop.

This bill still has to go to the full senate for a vote and the house does not have a companion bill under consideration.

For more information visit:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2012/7210/BillText/Filed/HTML

Latest Comments

Posted by: Anonymous on Feb 22, 2012 at 04:55 PM

"It would render the profession unsustainable for most servers" If thats the case then the restaurants will go without servers because no one will be able to afford to be a server. And wouldent the restraunts be the ones shooting them selves in the foot if this goes through? Good servers, can make a decent living, but like i said before, they wont do it serving pancakes and eggs to drunken college students at 2:00 am, at the local greasy spoon. If they are serving in a decent steak house or sea food restaurant, most of the time the average tip for serving a table of 4 should be around 12-15 bucks per table. Serve (a low estimate here) 6-8 tables an hour, and they should come away with about 95-120 dollars in tips per hour. With the average dinner service lasting about 3 hours, the server could have served 18-24 tables in that amount of time, i would say that should earn the server a conservative 275 in tips for 3 hours of work, to me that makes for a good nights pay..

Posted by: Adria Underwood on Feb 21, 2012 at 10:42 PM

That will never happen. They will make you fit all the other work into the serving so they do not have to pay you any higher. Believe me this is true. Most servers already have to do another job during slow times like wash their own dishes because the higher paid employees get taken off the clock and servers pick up the slack because they get paid lower. Sometimes instead of any support staff that is needed they just make the server do it. How many times have you been sat by your server. Where was the hostess. Not there she actually got paid minimum wage. We have been abused for many years now and I think this will backfire hard. Not only will we stop this because it is now against a constitutional amendment we, the people voted on, but I think we will retaliate and start to demand more money for all we do. Think about that with me fellow servers.

Posted by: Mike Location: Cape Coral on Feb 21, 2012 at 09:20 PM

Elizabeth Smith is rumored to get a substantial bonus - in the 10s of millions - if she can take OSI back public and get a big payday from an IPO. OSI is behind this bill. They want to attract investors for their public sale - and they want to do it on the backs of their employees. Not only that, but they are going to try and give every waiter/busser out there in FL a $2.49/hr pay cut. The rationale? The server's are already making enough money and restaurants are suffering under the heavy weight of $4.65 an hour. How absurd. A waiter's paycheck, under most circumstances, covers his/her tax withholding to a substantial degree. This bill will hang these folks out to dry to the IRS - as they will be forced to come out of pocket thousands every April. For a server making $25K writing a yearly check for $5000 really stings. It would render the profession unsustainable for most servers - who we all know are mostly comprised of young people. Elizabeth Smart and the primary shareholders of OSI are really playing dirty pool here. Their claim of the restaurant failure rate is laughable - Bloomberg says it's about 60% http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2007/sb20070416_296932.htm which is not really much different then other business genres. All this boils down to is OSI being able to flex their strength in a time of little political accountability - with a Governor who is likely to sign anything that smells strongly of austerity and is "Pro-Business". It should be noted that this sordid scheme has caught the attention of many and the general consensus is a very strong disapproval of politicians and their donors who conspire to take from the poor and give to themselves.

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