Pa.’s $2.83 an hour tipped worker is probably broke
The minimum wage for hourly workers in Pennsylvania is $7.25 — unless you work for tips. Why is the minimum wage for tipped workers so much lower?
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Christina Munce waits tables at Broad Street Diner in Philadelphia, where she's worked for more than eight years. (Sasha Arutyunova for TIME)
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Tipped workers in Pennsylvania make only $2.83 an hour on the books, and, while their employers are supposed to make up the difference to get them to the minimum wage of $7.25, that doesn’t always happen. Malcolm Burnley, a reporter with The Fuller Project, explains why service workers are paid this way in the first place — and why it’s so hard for many in this booming industry to make ends meet.
Click here to read Malcolm’s story with reporter Alana Semuels in Time Magazine.
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