Tipped employees to get raise under Blunt's directive

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Thousands of waiters, waitresses and other tipped employees soon should be getting a raise after Gov. Matt Blunt's administration reversed the state's interpretation of its new minimum-wage law.

Blunt said Wednesday the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations was wrong when it advised businesses they did not have to pay tipped employees a base salary of at least half the state's minimum wage.

Missouri's minimum wage rose in January from the federal rate of $5.15 an hour to $6.50 an hour as a result of a ballot measure last year.

The backers of that initiative said they assumed the minimum wage for tipped employees would similarly rise from the federal rate of $2.13 an hour to $3.25 an hour -- an amount equal to half the $6.50 rate.

But the state labor department advised employers they still had to pay only $2.13 an hour, so long as their employees' tips pushed their total paychecks to at least $6.50 an hour.

The department had continued to defend its position, even as the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University last week released a legal memorandum from six Missouri law professors saying the state's interpretation was wrong.

Blunt said his own general counsel also concluded the department's interpretation was wrong.

"Missourians voted to increase the minimum wage, and I have directed the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to immediately clarify that the base wage is not exempt from this mandate," Blunt said in a written statement Wednesday.

Labor department spokeswoman Tammy Cavender said the agency's original interpretation was based on the opinion of its own attorneys and experts. But she said the department would follow the governor's order.

"Certainly our interpretation of the law was inaccurate," Cavender said Wednesday.

An executive at the Missouri Restaurant Association expressed amazement when told of state's new interpretation.

"This is going to be very costly for our industry -- millions of dollars -- for the highest paid people they have on their staff already," said Pat Bergauer, the association's executive vice president, who noted food servers often already earn $15 to $30 an hour with tips.

St. Louis waitress Maggi Ellinger-Locke said she had assumed, when gathering petition signatures for the ballot measure last year, that the minimum wage increase would apply to employees who earn tips. She was shocked when the state labor department said otherwise.

So she began backing another campaign -- dubbed Save Our Tips -- aimed at persuading the labor department to change its position.

"It would be nice to get the wage myself, but there are a lot of people who really, really need it," she said. "There are lot of single mothers."

The Save Our Tips campaign now plans to monitor restaurants and bars to ensure their workers not only get paid more in the future, but also get back pay for the period during which they were wrongly paid less than $3.25 an hour, said Lara Granich, a spokeswoman for the campaign and director of the Jobs with Justice coalition in St. Louis.