The Fair Labor Standards Act — the act that determines the minimum wage, along with a whole host of 
other regulations regarding labor practices — isn’t even as old as American tipping customs; its original iteration dates to 1938. It’s been amended numerous times since then, most frequently to raise the minimum wage, and for the first three decades of its existence, tipped employees were subject to the same minimum as non-tipped workers. In 1966, however, Congress was persuaded to allow tipped workers to be paid at 50% of the Federal minimum wage. The number then fluctuated over the next 30 years between 50% and 60% of the minimum. It still wasn’t much, but at least it scaled with the minimum wage itself.
Then, in 1991, restaurant industry lobbyists helped push through an amendment that uncoupled the tipped minimum wage from the Federal minimum wage. The minimum wage for tipped employees has been frozen under Federal law at $2.13/hour ever since. Despite the fact that the minimum wage for non-tipped employees has since increased from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour, the tipped minimum wage has not budged one cent in over two decades.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at The Gratuitous Injustice of American Tipping Culture.
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