Having worked as a dining room hostess for several years in the 1980s, I’m dismayed at the attitude of restaurant owners toward a proposed minimum-wage increase for their service workers.

The base wage for some of these workers is as low as $2.95 per hour, and they have to rely on tips to meet their financial needs. What hasn’t been mentioned yet is that these workers are, by law, required to claim 8 percent of their sales for income tax purposes, whether or not their base wage, plus tips, actually equals 8 percent of what their customers ordered.

In her March 22 Maine Voices column, Five Fifty-Five restaurant owner Michelle Corry claimed that an increased minimum wage would “wipe out margins and put restaurants in peril.”

I’m not sure what margins she was talking about, but it’s more than likely profit margins. Low base wages assist in maintaining low overhead, which affects profit margins. She also claimed that if you asked her employees “if they would prefer to make a set wage or hustle,” they “would always choose their own initiative.” Well, that’s not so!

In a March 29 Maine Voices, one of Corry’s employees, Heather McIntosh (who has since resigned), said that she and four other employees of Five Fifty-Five support “a real minimum-wage increase that includes waiters and waitresses.”

McIntosh also says that “our schedules and incomes are inconsistent week to week and season to season. We never know if we’ll make enough to pay the rent or … child care,” noting that “tipped workers are three times more likely to live in poverty … .”

Why is this the only employment venue that forces its employees to rely on making a living wage based on the generosity of others?

A war was fought to abolish slavery, yet it still exists in the food service industry.

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