 So, we're back to minimum wage and starting off with taking a closer look at the tip to minimum wage to help us set the stage. That would be great. I think there's a handout for the record Damian Leonard Legislative Council. There should be two handouts on the committee's webpage. I'm just pulling up my copies of them. Okay, so I'll start with a little bit of background on tip to minimum wage. And then I'll just go through a side by side of some alternative approaches to the tip to minimum wage that could be taken on the minimum wage bill. So, as you may remember, right now our tip to minimum wage, which is the base wage that you have to pay to a tipped employee, is 50% of the regular minimum wage. That's $5.25. If a tipped employee doesn't get at least $5.25 per hour in tips, the employer is required by law to bring them up to minimum wage. In most instances, tipped employees would get more than that per hour, but there could be instances like a slow shift, or a big customer that didn't leave a tip or something like that where maybe the employer would need to bring them up to the minimum wage. And that's each pay period? Yeah, so it's every week. And so you true up at the end of the week. So it's actually, if you look at the fourth bullet there, so it's sufficient tips in a work week, or at least minimum wage for all hours that week, and that allows for some fluctuation over the shift. Is it work week or pay period? It is in a work week. And then so your pay period may have one work week, two work weeks, most people have two. And then the default by law is just one week, and then the employers can notify employees that they'll be going for two weeks or a different pay period. So I think most employers just tell employees when they start that you're gonna be getting a bi-weekly check. So employees that can be tipped work in hotels, motels, so-called tourist places, and the restaurant industry. And they have to customarily or regularly receive at least $120 per month in tips for direct and personal customer service. So in a restaurant back of the house workers wouldn't be considered tipped employees. In a hotel, someone like a bellhop or a parking attendant might be a tipped employee, but someone else who works in the office wouldn't be a tipped employee. The federal tip to minimum wage is $2.13 per hour. So that's the absolute floor for the minimum wage nationally. And that hasn't increased since 1991 when it was decoupled from the federal minimum wage. And then 26 states, including every state in New England, plus Washington DC, have a minimum wage that's somewhere above, or a tipped minimum wage that's somewhere above the federal tipped minimum wage. And in additional seven states, mostly from Minnesota West, have no tipped minimum wage. And they just have a single minimum wage regardless of whether or not you get tips. And then 17 states have a tipped minimum wage that's equal to the federal tipped wage. So there's, as you can see, pretty good variability. And what I'll do here is just walk through a couple of different options that could be pursued. I'd like to see your questions. So Washington, which is, I guess, just held as a standard as an example of the $15 minimum wage anyway. Washington state? Yeah. There are 1350. Right, but they're the one on the first ones to go. Anyway, they don't have a tipped minimum wage. You know, the entire west coast does not have a tipped minimum wage. So Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, they've all eliminated the tipped minimum wage. And then the other states are mostly in the Mountain West, with Montana and Nevada, and the outliers of Minnesota, and the Midwest there. And just one more question. On the $120 per month, has that been changed? It's been a while since that's been changed. I can't remember off the top of my head when that was last updated. The federal amount is, I think, only $30. So it's quite a bit lower, but the $120 hasn't been updated for a while. I could find out when. It's just, it comes out to like six hours a week or something like that for receiving tips or whatever. Do you have information about how the provinces approach this, particularly Quebec? No. I can find out for you now. Yeah, I could look at what Quebec's minimum wage law is. I think Canadian minimum wage on average is a little bit under $10 US dollars per hour. And I know there's a, it varies from a low in the Maritimes. And I can't remember where the high Canadian minimum wage is, but I can get you those numbers. I came across them the other day. And I know that there's some talk about going to a national minimum wage in Canada, or about the national government adopting minimum wage that preempts the provincial minimum wages. But I don't know if that's just a couple of members of the Canadian Parliament, or if that's a real substantive push. So it's sometimes hard to tell when you're just reading articles, whether it's just one or two members who are outspoken or a real coalition. So first option, of course, is no change in the minimum wage. So it would continue to be 50% of our standard minimum wage, which means that when the minimum wage reaches $15, it would be at $750. So whatever date the minimum wage would reach $15 at. An alternative is to decouple the two and increase the tip to minimum wage by the CPI or 5%, whichever is less, which means the tip to minimum wage would keep pace with inflation, and basically grow at the same rate as it would if we didn't change the minimum wage through S40. But if the minimum wage was increased, that means the gap between the two would gradually grow because you'd be working from a smaller base with the tip to minimum wage once the actual minimum wage started to increase by inflation. And the actual minimum wage, at least as S40 is drafted, would outpace inflation for about six years. And this is similar to Washington, D.C., whose tip to minimum wage is currently below $5. It's going to reach $5 in 2020, and then increased by the CPI after that. And as you'll remember, their regular minimum wage is going up to $15. Another option is to freeze the tip to minimum wage at 525. An example of this is Massachusetts to our south, whose tip to minimum wage is at 375 per hour. So there are a handful of states across the country that have done this, somewhere above the federal tip to minimum wage, but less than their minimum wage. Another option is to reduce or actually increase the difference between the minimum wage and tip to minimum wage. And there are two ways to do this. You could change the ratio of the wage. So right now we're at half. New York has their set of two-thirds or 750, whichever is more. So as a practical matter, it's going to be two-thirds of the minimum wage as their wage climbs. You can set a fixed tip credit, which Arizona is a $3 tip credit. My favorite tip credit is Colorado, which is $3.02. I have no idea where the two cents come from. What does that mean, a fixed tip credit? So it basically means that an employer is allowed to credit the first $3 in tips that an employee earns towards the minimum wage that would be due to the tipped employee. So in our state, we effectively have a $5.25 tip credit by setting the tipped base wage at 50%. And their state, instead of saying it's a percentage, they say subtract $3 from whatever the minimum wage is. And there's your tipped wage. That's just a different way of saying it. So New York's approach is similar to Vermont's law. The second approach would allow for quicker growth in the tipped minimum wage. And that also makes for easier math. The fifth option is to eliminate the tipped minimum wage. This could be done immediately or gradually. As I mentioned, there are seven states that have done this. Maine had initially passed when they updated their minimum wage, was initially going to eliminate the tipped minimum wage. They rolled back that elimination of the tipped minimum wage this past fall. And then the other option, like I mentioned before, is to reduce the tipped minimum wage. So instead of about 50%, it could be in Hampshire where it's 45% of the standard minimum wage, or a fixed amount, although 50%. And the only limitation there is you can't go below the federal minimum wage. So those are the options. Let me show you now the side-by-side of these different approaches and what they would look like. And this is pretty small, so it probably makes sense to zoom in so we can look at one at a time or two at a time. There we go. That's actually, can everybody read that? Or do we need to go a little closer? So the left column here is no change to the existing law. So this is the latest projections on inflation, the latest consensus projections we have here. If S40 didn't pass and the existing law stayed the way it is, we'd reach $12.16 an hour in 2024, at which point the tipped minimum wage would reach 608. So you can kind of see that gradual, steady growth here. Inflation is expected to be a little higher in the first few years, and then level out around 2.2% per year in the out years. So if we pass S40 as currently written with no change to the tipped minimum wage language, you can see the growth here is quicker. And by 2024, you'd reach a tipped minimum wage of $7.50, which is about $1.42 in nominal dollars more than the existing tipped minimum wage. And in real dollars, you know, $2018, it would be less than $1.42, but I don't know that off the top of my head. Not good at those inflation calculations off the top of my head here. So if we increase by the CPI, so this is basically the tipped minimum wage increased as if it would if there was no change in the existing law, and then the minimum wage increased as set forth in S40, what you can see is that gradually growing gap that I described between the minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage there would be almost $9 more than the tipped minimum wage by 2024. And then the next column here is just an example of how to eliminate the tipped minimum wage by 2024, what it would look like in terms of the increases that businesses would see in terms of the base wage they would need to pay employees. And I figured it out to be roughly $1.62 and a half cents. So we went with $1.62 in the initial years and $1.65 in the last year. But as you can see, it's year over year. It's a fairly substantial increase. And if you compare it, you can just see here the tipped minimum wage under S40. So you can see the difference here. In the first year under S40, we're at $5.55. In the first year already under the elimination of the tipped minimum wage gradient, we're at $6.87. And that gap grows to $7.50 between those two models by the end as the tipped minimum wage goes away. And then after that, these would just say it walks up going forward with an inflationary increase. This next example here is just setting a fixed tip credit like Arizona, the $3. So just thanks for really easy math as we do. The inflation increases on the minimum wage just subtract $3. And that's your tipped minimum wage. But as you can see, again, your tipped minimum wage increases more quickly than it would be under the percentage model. And so that's one of the things here as time goes on under that model and the minimum wage gets higher, the relative buying power of the tipped minimum wage increases because that difference relative to the minimum wage becomes smaller and smaller. And then finally, the frozen example here just shows you the differences you can see in each year. If we kept that tipped minimum wage at $5.25, where we would be at. So those are the examples. Obviously there's probably 15,000 permutations of all of these different models. But that just gives you some sense of what the different options are. And all of these options have an example somewhere. So it's just a question of really the policy that the committee wants to pursue. Any questions? Thank you for your time. Thank you. We're doing a check here. I believe that we don't have DOL here yet. Not until 10. Both Cameron and Dirk are coming at 10. Yeah, Cameron is one of the type of people in the frame Isaac, are you ready to step up? Yeah, that's fine. Have you met everyone? We've done introductions. Yes. We have representatives to do stuff like that. Thank you for having me for the record. Isaac Graham, political engagement director with the rights and democracy of the world. So I want to email you two pieces of testimony, but it wasn't super long ago. No, it shouldn't be there. Okay. So don't need to take up a lot of your time. Just wanted to provide us a little bit of background on tip to minimum wage and share a little bit of testimony with a tip minimum wage worker who wanted to be here but couldn't make it this big enough to work. So very quick background for those who haven't been able to explain what rights and democracy is yet. We're a membership-based organization in Vermont and New Hampshire. And we do local popular education and grassroots advocacy around issues of social, racial, and economic and environmental justice. And so we've been focusing a lot on the minimum wage campaign as a means of reducing income and equality and poverty in the state. And we really appreciate you giving this so much thought and weighing the issue. And when it comes to tip minimum wage, our position is that at the very least the bill should not decouple the tip minimum wage from the minimum wage. It's very important to tip minimum wage workers that they're not relying super heavily on tips for their income just creates a sense of instability and disproportionately creates problems for women in the tip workforce who are kind of forced into a position where they have to please the customer no matter what and at least some more problems of sexual harassment in the workplace. Two-thirds of tip minimum wage workers are women so this is very much an issue that disproportionately impacts women. Much of what's in the kind of briefing on the tip minimum wage in terms of the background was covered just now. But a few facts to highlight. There are, as Damian mentioned, seven states in the United States that do not have a tip minimum wage. In those states they have robust restaurant industries that have managed to thrive and workers in those industries have more stability in their take-home pay and don't have to face the same issues of lack of the numbers being on the books in terms of getting credit. I didn't want to do your process. So the tip minimum wage being a thing is not always been there. It's actually relatively newer development over the last number of decades. So there was no such thing as a tip sub-minimum wage for the first 30 years of there being a federal minimum wage. That was changed in 1966 when those folks were brought into being actually part of having a minimum wage. And at that point it was set to 50%, which has been raised and then lowered at different periods over the last few decades. And it's been frozen nationally at 213 since 1996. Luckily in Vermont there's been some good legislation to make that a better situation for tip workers. A few things on Vermont. 43% of tip workers are waiters and waitresses. On average those workers are earning around 14 an hour, meaning that about 70% of their income is reliant on tips rather than their wage. And the problem with that being that there's instability and changes depending on what kind of shifts those workers get is not ideal for anyone to not have that kind of stability in terms of what they can expect to take home on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. On the second page, just to break down a little bit of median wage and average wage for tip workers in Vermont. And I'm not going to dive into those numbers too deeply, but just for the benefit of the committee to be able to see those numbers. So I don't really, I don't have to dig too much deeper into this, but I would encourage members to review the numbers. So the only other piece I wanted to highlight from this at the end is that the restaurant industry is strong in Vermont and can afford to adapt to an increasing tip minimum wage. If the tip minimum wage were to be eliminated over the next six years, I think that you would just want to hear from the restaurant industry on that. I'm sure that they'll be contacting and testifying. I know that the experience in Maine with their attempt to eliminate the tip minimum wage over a 10-year period was met with very intense resistance. So I think that the increase of the minimum wage to 15 an hour that can bring up the tip minimum wage at least over this period to 750. And given that they are required to make at least the minimum wage, that will be a huge benefit for tip workers. And the more that we can move toward a system, and I think it probably just in practical terms needs to be a bit of a longer process. But the more that we can get towards eliminating tip wage and having a fair wage for all, the more it will create stability for those workers. The more it will protect the women who are the majority of those working for tips there in this industry. So just a number to highlight the sales of restaurants in Vermont are expected to reach almost 800 billion this year, which is a 4.3 increase over last. So the restaurant industry is doing well and I think could accommodate changes of this nature if they're done in a way that restaurants can adapt over time to that change. I know that there's a cultural kind of an educational shift that needs to happen for that to work out, but it can certainly be done as the seven states that currently have one fair wage could attest to. And then I have, this was also submitted to the record testimony from Andy Sibranic, who is of a monitor who works for tips in the restaurant industry. He didn't want to mention what restaurants, but was willing to at least share a bit of his testimony and I'll just highlight a few things that he mentioned. So let's see where to start. I don't have to read the whole thing to you all, but I've worked in the restaurants as a server for years. Many of my closest friends and loved ones also work in the service industry. I have a deep respect for the work ethic prior to those who choose this line of work. But to make a living wage based on tips is inconsistent and often means odd hours, more tables per server, few breaks and lack of benefits. It is a demanding job that takes a particular dedication and skill that can only be obtained after years of experience, serving as quickly being recognized as a skilled craft as it should be. Minimal wage increase for tip workers and for all Vermonters would show that their hard work is valued. Skipped to the third paragraph, paying a living wage would encourage more like me to seek work here in Vermont. The service industry has grown over 85% since 1990, more than most other sectors. However, as the number of tip workers continue to grow, they remain in the bottom quarter of all wage earners. Much of the tourism that sustains our communities is made through ever expanding food and beverage businesses. It's a big draw for tourists to check out Vermont's award-winning restaurants and breweries. The summer and fall see a huge spike in business and tip workers become highly sought after. A raise in the minimum wage would entice more young people to seek such work and create more incentive to stay here in Vermont. I love what I do. I find my work worthwhile and satisfying, but unlike other types of employment, relying on tips to meet a livable wage can be very inconsistent. It's difficult to predict if there will be enough on my paycheck each week. Close to one out of six tip workers and their families live in poverty, often requiring the help of public support programs. Tip workers make up 46% of the share of workers who require federal assistance. While it's great that these options are available, they are not meant to be in place as permanent fixtures of one's income. So those are just pieces that I wanted to highlight from a testimony from one tip worker. To give a bit of background on the tip minimum wage and why we believe that it should not be decoupled from the minimum wage and that we should think about a longer conversation of how we can get towards one fair wage for all workers in the state so that folks are not having to rely on inconsistent income and having instead of one boss at the place they work having dozens of bosses every day who determine how much their actual income is, which I think for women especially causes a lot of issues. Any questions? Can you go to the third paragraph? Actually, it's the second paragraph. We skipped over that second paragraph and I just want to highlight one area where it says as I find my way through the ever-changing job market I have chosen the service industry as a way of supporting myself. I enjoy this work and have chosen it over other occupations. Just highlighting the fact that nobody's making them do this. There's always options. He can rise through it. He can own a business and be referred to as a Virginia restaurant industry in the state. Just a quick response to that. I would say that yes, people have a choice, but there is service industry in Vermont and there's a need to fill those jobs. So we need people to work on those jobs. So yes, they have a choice, but there's always a pool over the last number of decades. More and more of that pool of labor that we need is low wage work. Yes, I hear your point, but are those jobs exist? Are you suggesting that in the long run we have a minimum wage? Remember this is a livable wage, this is a minimum wage. So we're talking about two very different things. Are you suggesting we limit that we have a minimum wage that is consistent across the board? Yes. I would challenge you to find a server who wants to get rid of the tips. I would challenge you because they make a pretty good living in most cases. I know some of myself. I think that is frankly a silly. I hear you. I would challenge you to find a waiter or bartender who would choose to work minimum wage rather than work for tips. So I've strictly heard that from some folks, and I think especially for tip workers in higher end restaurants and higher traffic bars and restaurants, that is very true. I have spoken with some, just to say that there's not none. I've spoken with folks who are in more low income housing. I remember a woman who, when I was canvassing, I used to knock a lot of doors for this. She worked for IHOP and she talked about what a nightmare that was when they would have many shifts that they didn't have very many folks coming in. But they thought the minimum wage, they were paid the minimum wage at that point, every pay period. If they don't get the minimum wage for the other tips and their wage, then they get paid the minimum wage every pay period. Thank you. Thank you very much for the time to speak. Thank you. We have a couple of representatives from DOL. Dirk Anderson, General Counsel and Cameron Wood. Okay. Are you separate? We're together. All right. We have you listed on the agenda first as Cameron and then as Dirk. So do it that way. I want you to go side by side. Or you can go side by side too. Good morning. So for the record, Dirk Anderson, General Counsel, Department of Labor, Cameron Wood and the Unemployment Insurance and Wages Division Director of the Department of Labor. And so we are taking up the minimum wage, focusing particularly on paid wages this morning. But the other information that the department can share with us, that is our primary focus this morning. So I think, go ahead. I guess we're not really sure what the questions are. I think we do have a wage in our division that enforces the minimum wage law. That includes the tip wage law. We do receive calls, questions, complaints. What I can say, I'm specific to tip wages and we've been asked this question before is, you know, what percentage of the claims that we get are from employees receiving tips? What percent, you know, we were asked, are there people who wind up receiving less than the minimum wage because they get lousy tips and the employer doesn't make up the difference? And the majority, that is a very, very small number of claims. We went back over the past two years and looked at complaints to the wage in our division and out of slightly more than 100 complaints about unpaid or underpaid wages. Roughly 10% of those were from tipped employees and only two of those wound up being about receiving less than the minimum wage at the end of the week when their tips did not. When the employer did not bring them up to the minimum wage by making up the difference between what they actually received in tips and what the minimum wage was. So we don't hear a lot of complaints specifically about that. The majority of the questions and complaints we get about tip wages have to do with tip pools. And employees who feel tip pools aren't being administered equitably. And those are, you're probably aware that, you know, tip pools are allowed under federal law. There are some limitations on how tip pools can be distributed under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And we do receive complaints about that. And it's, those are very hard complaints to investigate because, you know, not all the tips are on credit cards. Some of them are cash if they're distributed. Maybe I'm getting out from myself, but the general guidance under the Fair Labor Standards Act currently, and again the current federal administration is looking at changing this, but currently you're only supposed to share. If you do tip pool you're only supposed to distribute those tips to employees who actually receive tips. So, and those are the kind of complaints we get that some of the tips get spread out amongst kitchen staff who aren't normally considered tip employees. We sometimes get complaints that, you know, the manager or front-of-house person or the owner may be retaining a portion of the tip pool for themselves. And the S40, at least as it's drafted now, as it came out of the Senate, does specifically say that tip pools are okay as long as those tips are just distributed amongst employees who regularly receive tips. So, that would address that concern. I've got a couple of questions. This is new to me, so these bear with my ignorance. At the purpose of tip pools, is that because of shift differentials? I mean, why do restaurants have them? I believe general concept behind tip pools is that you may have, I mean somebody may just get a big table and they're a bunch of lousy tippers and you spend an hour and a half with them and they leave you nothing unless somebody else got a lovely couple who left them 30%. I believe the general concept is it's a way to sort of even out inequities that result from just discrepancies, variations between what people tip, who may have a good table one night and who may have a bad table. I think that's a general idea. So, in general, is not somebody who works an afternoon or somebody who works a day or no, no. Do you have a sense of how common they are? How common practice it is? I think it's a fairly common practice. I couldn't put a percentage on it, but we certainly do get calls. Thank you. Do you have a cause about the distribution of tip jars and delties and other sort of counter situations? I don't know. We could specifically, I think we have had those calls. What percentage of typical questions that is? I don't know. Yeah, I would say we give those calls. The initial question would be, are you a tipped employee? If you're not a tipped employee, then you don't have the record to those tips. But just to reiterate what Dirk was saying, as far as the tipped employees go, we don't receive complaints that they're not receiving minimum wage. If it's a lot of, you know, the employer isn't giving them any wages or the employer is closing, they haven't received their last check, that's really a lot of the complaints we receive. So, a previous witness had a document that I'm not sure how much it pulled from Vermont's DOL statistics, because it was giving an average wage in a job classification and it had waiters and bartenders in the $14, $15 an hour range. How do you determine what that is for those kinds of statistics and whether or not those were actually your statistics? I do think Vermont, does this Vermont publish average wages? Vermont does. How we arrive at those numbers would really be a question for our economist, Matt Barowitz, head of the labor market information division, but we do publish and regularly update average wages by job class and that information is on our website. I don't know what you were showing recently, but we do maintain that information on our website and we keep it up to date. Yeah, for me it's, so if you have an average, that's saying that there's some people who make below that or above that and I've heard comments from local resident tours that wait-step makes substantially more than $14 an hour. So, getting at facts versus anecdotes and how those facts are derived versus how the anecdotes are derived is going to be important to me to sort out and tease out what we're really talking about here when it comes to tip wages. How would you enforce, how would you be able to enforce a complaint of someone saying I'm not getting the minimum wage because I didn't make any tips this week? The way we enforce any wage complaint, if we get a complaint, we take an initial look at the complainant's allegations, if it looks like what they're alleging is, is in fact a wage violation or a tip wage violation. We will then reach out to the employer and say, here's what you're usually ex-employee, not always. As said, do you have any information that you'd like to give us and we asked them to give us payroll records and we do a little investigation and if we find that wages are owed, we issue a determination finding that wages are owed and how many wages are owed. If the employer either pays that or they appeal it. We have, for five or six years now, five or six years ago, the legislature revised section 342A to create a more formal appeals process for wage and hour violations, which we now have in place and which is actually working pretty well. So there's a statutory right to an appeal by either party. There's an evidentiary hearing before an administrative law judge in the Department of Labor. They issue a determination or a decision finding some facts and conclusions. That is appealable to the Employment Security Board. And then once a determination or a decision becomes final, we send, if we find that wages are owed, we send the employer a final letter saying, you know, this is a judgment. It's a final judgment because there's been no further appeal. Ex-amount of wages are owed and then if they don't pay that with whatever we ask them to pay it in 10, 20 days, we send it to our collections attorney who pursues a collection action in Superior Court. So that's the process. That's the process. The only thing I would add to it is it can be extremely difficult in, you know, the service industry is because these people are dealing with cash most of the time. It's very difficult when an employer doesn't have accurate records. It really turns into a, you know, I don't want to make it sound trivial, but he said, she said, and at that point it's, you know, who is more credible. So they can be difficult to enforce in that instance, especially with the tip pooling. You know, if a complainant says they're not receiving an adequate portion of the tip pooling, then it's, you know, are they aware of how much was in the tip pool? Is the employer aware? And just because of the nature of the cash, it can be very difficult to track. So you've run into circumstances where that has been the case? Yes, ma'am. And that's why, you know, we always try to advise employers even, especially in these industries when you're dealing with cash. And having accurate records is a way to protect yourself from these situations. If you don't, then, like I said, it becomes an employee claiming that they're not receiving their share of the tips. And if you can't document what they're receiving or, you know, what the overall tip pool arrangement is just on that topic, you know, it can come back and be difficult to find in favor. I'll represent the students. And also in the last witness, they stated that of the tipped employees, and again, I'm not sure if he was quoting national numbers or state numbers, that 59% of them work in restaurants. And tipped employees also include others that are in statute. Who do you come across as other tipped wage employees, you know, people who are paid this minimum, this tip minimum, I mean, doorman, chambermaids, hotel, I mean, they say hotel workers. I'm not sure, I'm not sure what other workers there are that we have in Vermont that qualify under the law as being a tipped wage. Well, the statute allows, there's two requirements to be considered a tipped employee and receive the tip wage under the statute. One is that they work in a, I believe the statute refers to it as a hotel, motel, restaurant, or tourist place, which is kind of old-timey language. So it has to be hotel, restaurant, tourist place, and they have to customarily receive at least $120 a month in tips. In terms of other employees who may receive tips like chambermaids, we don't, we haven't really had tipped complaints from them. We believe anecdotally that almost all chamber people are paid minimum wage rather than treated as tipped employees. I do know that that question came up in the Senate Economic Development Committee and that committee was going to follow up with representatives of the hotel industry to find out, you know, whether or not the industry practice was to treat all cleaning people, chamber people as minimum wage people, and I don't know whether they got that information. I'm sorry, who was seeking that information? Senate Economic Development Committee. Earlier this session, when we were talking about tips, it seemed to me that they were going to reach out to the hotel industry for that information. I don't know if they did that. But have you made any kind of ruin in the department related to whether this group of workers working in hotels are considered tipped workers? They would have to customarily receive more than $120 a month in tips. And again, we haven't had any complaints from the, that we're aware of from cleaning people, chamber people who have said, I get paid the tip wage and I don't make enough tips to meet the minimum wage. We haven't had a complaint like that. In that instance, I think we would look at the specific case, the facts. I don't think we would make a determination that, you know, all chambermaids are tipped employees. We would look at that individual and see the key would be whether they're receiving $120 a month in tips. Representative, please speak. Well, it seems the statute's pretty clear, you know. So there's no ambiguity. You know, if you made $120, then that's the baseline. What's fascinating is when we look at, you know, our industry, you know, being tourism, you know, so strong in the state, a lot of the organizations are, I've got constituents who work in that market that provide different services that fall into that category. And when I'm getting the spa people, you know, that work with, you know, some of the resorts and the hotels in our area, and depending on, you know, their skill set and their strength, you know, make a pretty decent, you know, not only wage, but also their tip average is pretty consistent, you know, as well. But I would imagine that if it was a complaint, you know, you'd be able to disaggregate that fairly easily, I would think, you know, from what we've heard so far. So you wonder, we don't get a lot of those on average? No, sir, I would say the majority of the complaints we get from a tipped employee would be from the restaurant industry. Thank you. I was surprised to hear earlier that the truing up of the tips to the minimum wage is done on a weekly basis, is that a big area? Has it always been like that? Has that ever come up as a commission? It has always been on a weekly basis, as far back as I recall. I know most restaurants are on a weekly basis. Good questions on tipped wages, Mr. Yeller. Well, while we've got you, we had testimony early on around the youth wage, and would like to have a sense from you of how the department interprets the current statute related to youth wage. Certainly. So, when you say youth wage, there's student wage. So, Vermont's minimum wage sub-chapter contains a series of exemptions, one of those exemptions. They don't have like... It's for a student working during all or any part of the school year or regular vacation periods. So, student working during the school year or a regular vacation period is exempt from Vermont's minimum wage law. The department has interpreted that and continues to interpret that to exclude the summer break because if you don't exclude the summer break, the subsection becomes kind of meaningless because it would be always. So, students working during the summer break in Vermont are, according to us, entitled to Vermont's minimum wage. The statute does clearly exempt them if they're working during the school year. So, at that point, you have a couple of fallbacks. If they're exempt from Vermont minimum wage, then they're subject to federal minimum wage, which is still 7.25. There's a sub-exemption under... There's an exemption under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act for what are called a blue student learners, which allows an employer to pay a minimum wage of 4.25 an hour for up to 90 days to a high school student. So, it's considered like a training wage or a learning wage. We don't get any complaint. We haven't had any complaints about somebody saying, hey, I'm being paid 4.25 an hour. I think I ought to be paid more. We've had a couple of questions about that, but we haven't had a complaint involving a sub-federal minimum wage earner. So, in theory, it's possible that a student working during the school year could be employed for up to 90 days at 4.25 an hour, be compliant with federal law, be compliant with Vermont law. But again, we haven't had any complaints about that, and I think anecdotally, under Vermont's current employment climate, employment rate is up 3%. Nobody's going to work for 4.25 an hour, but it's theoretically possible because of Vermont's minimum student minimum wage exemption. So, with students, you're looking at essentially high school students? Yes, and again, the statute says student doesn't say high school student, but that's how we interpret it. The only thing I would add is the other thing we will look at is was there an agreement between the employer and the student if the employer agrees to hire them at, let's say, $9 an hour or $10, 11, whatever the agreement is, that's what we would enforce. We would go by what? Just a blanket, I'm allowed to pay them $7, if you agree to pay them $10, and that's what you're, that's what you're paying them. If you agree to pay them $9, that's what we would enforce. And we do get complaints, not necessarily sub-minimum wage, but just we regularly get complaints about employees who say, hey, I was hired, they told me they were going to give me $13 an hour, I got my first paycheck, it was $12 an hour. We will investigate those complaints. Again, generally if there was an oral agreement, it's going to be hard for us to enforce, but if there's something in writing, we will enforce that. Do you get any complaints from high school students at all? We get complaints from their parents. Generally from others. Generally from others, of course. Of course. Dirk has been involved in this program a lot longer than I have, but I can't think of the top of my head of receiving a lot of complaints of high school students being paid $7 an hour. I think it's more in line with the majority of complaints we get from other individuals, which is I am an employer who is refusing to pay me what the agreement on wage was. And wages for 14-year-olds, 16-year-olds, those all fit under the student category. I mean, some 14-year-olds can work under certain conditions. 14 and 15-year-olds can work under some limited conditions. Obviously, 16 and 17-year-olds can work under most conditions, except explicitly enumerated hazardous occupations. But during the school year, they would all fall into that student working during all or part of the school year. Minimum wage exemption. Do you have records of people? Again, we sit anecdotally, no one has complained about it, but is there any way to track where employers know where employers are paying less than, aside from agricultural workers, we tend to assume that they're allowed to pay less than the minimum wage. But I just don't know who's employing them based on what you just said. Who's going to work at 4.25 or 3.75 an hour if they're not receiving tips on top of that? If somebody is working for a subminimal wage, probably wouldn't know about it unless we got a complaint. We do receive a camera, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but most of the wage information that we have available to us either comes through responses to employer surveys, which is what the labor market information division does, or wage information that's reported when employers fill out their quarterly unemployment insurance tax reports. But those reports, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, just report aggregate gross wages paid in a quarter. Are they broken down? I don't recall off the top of my head if we ask for the actual hourly rate. I know we ask if the individuals are salaried or hourly on the unemployment insurance quarterly report. I know Matt, Barry Woods, our economist, did some analysis of the hourly wage information that we have unemployment information, and in my recollection of talking with him about that, it was very difficult to attest to the accuracy of that information because when we were doing the analysis, we ran into a lot of instances where people, if it were true, they were being paid $2 an hour or something like that, and in theory, you should never see that because an employer should be reporting all wages paid, which would include tips, and so the hourly rate should never equate to that. But when you ask the question, that's what I was thinking. That's the only way I think we would be able to try and analyze it would be to look at unemployment wage information we have and to see if anyone is receiving a federal minimum wage. But we wouldn't know, just based on the wage information, we wouldn't know if the individual was a student or if the individual was working in a particular industry. So it would require a lot of investigations to kind of drill down to that level. Regents, yes? If a 16 or 17 year old has dropped out of high school, are they considered still under student wage law? They would not be a student at that point. So I would say it would be entitled to Vermont minimum wage unless some other minimum wage exemption applied. Other questions? Just one more. If a waitress or a waiter felt like that tips would be changed due to sexual harassment, that they would not report that to you. Is that correct? They would report that to the Attorney General's office. Is that? That's where they should report it. If we received a wage complaint that included some allegation that the wages they were receiving or the tips they were getting were somehow related to sexual harassment by the employer, we would certainly refer that to the Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General's office. But we don't have an enforcement authority over the sexual harassment piece of it, but we would refer that to the AG's office. We can look into a wage violation. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you. So we have a phone. Madam Chair. This is Jed Davis, owner of a farmhouse group. We had a couple of other restaurant people that we tried to get into today. People used to suggest it might be, but we couldn't get them today. Both traveling. I've offered them a day to work. They've prepared mornings. I've offered them a day for next week. What do you do? Perfect. So, Madam Chair. Yes. I ran into the president of the Farm Bureau, and he'd like to offer their perspective from the farmers. Pass that on. It's Ron Wilden. You're on with the committee. Good morning, Jed. This is Helen Head. Hi, Helen. How are you? Fine, thanks. What are you doing? I'm good. Good. I'm here with other members of the committee from around the state, and I would appreciate your thoughts about a tip to minimum wage. Sure. Well, I wrote a statement. I can just read it. It'll take a couple of minutes. That's fine. Before you jump into that, though, could you just identify yourself by name and your work for the record? Yeah. Jed Davis. I own the farmhouse group, family of restaurants based in Chittenden County. Thank you. So, I'll go ahead. Uh-huh. Please do. Okay. Many of the restaurants have been regularly to discuss the minimum wage law changes being contemplated by your committee. It has been a very positive and productive discussion process that includes well-intentioned small business owners around the state. There is no us-versus-them mentality in these discussions. In fact, most of us work ourselves as dishwashers, waiters, cooks in the light in our early days. This is not a Walton family versus low wage earners debate. Rather, it is a collection of small business owners who rely on their employees and employees who rely on their employers to make a living. I own four restaurants in a catering company with about 175 employees in all of Chittenden County. Most of our employees are full-time and receive benefits such as pay vacation and access to our company sponsored health insurance plan. I feel proud that I can offer competitive wages and important benefits to my employees. Generally speaking, I am a supporter of minimum wage increases in Vermont and on a national level. On a national level, in particular, minimum wage has been held tragically low for decades and should occur in my opinion. Though I should point out that I am probably an outlier in the industry with this opinion and I greatly respect the opinions of my contemporaries. However, I am concerned about continuing to have the tips minimum wage determined as 50% of the state minimum. The tips minimum wage could increase sharply to 750 an hour in a short period of time. This increase may not sound like much, but greatly affect the health of Vermont's restaurant and tourism industry. There are a few factors unique to the tips minimum wage that I hope are considered by the committee. First, tourism or restaurant industry employers are required to ensure that all tips employees achieve the state minimum for all hours worked. If an employee's tips fall short of achieving the state minimum, the employer must make up the difference. Tips employees will continue to have this minimum wage safeguard regardless of whether the tips minimum is 525 or 750 and regardless of whether the state minimum is 1050 or 15. Second, a typical tips employee's total income, their wage, plus their tips already exceed state minimum wage. Tips employees can achieve more than a half times to four times the current minimum of 1050. Increasing the tips minimum from 525 to 750 would be giving the grades to employees who already exceed, or in some cases well exceed, the state minimum wage at a significant cost to restaurant industry employers. Lastly, the majority of a restaurant's hours logs are at the tips minimum wage. Successful restaurants should be able to handle the minimum wage increase of 1050 up to 15 for our cooks, dishwashers and back-of-house employees of the next several years in my opinion. In fact, these wages are already trending well above 1050 due to employee shortages throughout the state. However, an increase of the tips minimum wage from 525 to 750 would change the profitability of restaurants significantly. And these pay increases would go to a set of employees who are already exceeding the state minimum. I hope the committee will consider decoupling the tips minimum wage from the state minimum wage as you consider your options. Rather tie the tips minimum wage to an inflationary increase or some other modest measure. This will allow the restaurant and tourism industry to better accept other changing expenses such as upward wage trends rising raw materials expenses the cost of health care and employee shortages issues allowing the tips minimum wage to increase to 750 in the face of other cost increases that the restaurant industry faces will truly jeopardize continued operations for many Vermont restaurants. And these pay increases would be going to a set of employees who already exceed the state minimum wage. This seems counterproductive. I hope this committee will consider decoupling the tips minimum wage from the state minimum wage discussion. Thank you. We have at least a couple of questions here, Jed. First from Representative Stevens and Waterbury. Jed, can you take a half a step back and just talk about the salary structures in your restaurants in terms of front of house, back of house who gets minimum wage anyway and you touched upon the fact that there's a great competition for back of house people especially, but can you just give us a broader picture of how you pay wages in your restaurants? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard most of your questions so I'll do my best here, but if you're talking about back of house, well first of all the managers in the company either receive a salary or you know, what I would call a high hourly rate we do make a firm commitment to our salary staff that they will work what we would call a normal schedule if I say work with two consecutive days out in a room and those salaries are I would say highly competitive for the market. Back of house employees you know entry level which would be dishwashers, prep cooks you know, those wages are already for us anyway starting above the state minimum we're probably a 12 or 1250 this is a starting wage we have we are, we're still a pretty young company, our first flagship restaurant we'll be eight years old in May we have back of house employees that have been with us since day one and those folks are probably in that 18, 18, 15, 19, 1950 an hour range a what I would call a highly skilled line cook, a skilled line cook that's capable of working several stations in our kitchen would probably start at around 16 or 1550 there is definitely, I think you touched on this a lot of competition out there for skilled employees you know, we think we offer a good competitive and positive job experience so we always feel like we're capable of attracting good people but there's no question there are less applicants today for jobs job postings than there were say five years ago and that's true for our house employees too I think but we probably just feel that a little more acutely with our back of house employees yes, I'd like a clarification please maybe I'm just confused and you can help me out I think you said a couple of times that all of your employees are earning above minimum wage so at least in your case I'm not sure why you would object to increasing the tip wage minimum since that couldn't seem to affect you at all are you advocating for the places where that's not the case again I think I heard your question right so they currently increasing the tip to minimum wage from $5.25 to $7.50 would absolutely affect the expenses for my restaurant business those employees are paid $5.25 an hour now so moving that to $7.50 would be a $2.25 per hour increase to those employees across the board did I answer that right my question was you said you were already earning more than that so I'm not sure why you would through the tips they're earning more than that I misunderstood thank you if they're making $5.25 plus $20 an hour in tips I'm fulfilling my obligation paying them $5.25 and obviously they are exceeding $10.50 so giving them $2.25 an hour raise would increase my expense significantly okay I'm sorry I misunderstood I thought you meant your base rate was higher than the minimum alright thank you other questions do we have written testimony from you Jed are you able to forward what you read to us our committee assistant or to me and I can make sure that we get it into the record that would be great you've got my email so you're in wrong okay that's fine great here's another question from Representative Stevens Jed have you ever had to make up an employee's salary if they didn't make enough in tip wages it's very rare it's very rare and typically when that arises it's the classic case would be some sort of snowy Monday night when we expect that it's going to be slow and we determined that we're going to cut a server from their shift early and perhaps they didn't earn enough tips so then we look at it and we just make an adjustment in our payroll and then in a 10-50 for that hour hour and a half two hours whatever it is that they work but it's very rare great thank you okay Jed again thank you for weighing in with us we appreciate it thank you we appreciate it okay bye now bye so Ron we had some people waiting the leaders okay Ashley and while you're getting up I'll just mention that occasionally as I sort of my eyes run the room I see that there are people who are here that may have something to contribute our format is such that it's hard for us to have open discussions and have contributions from people who are not in the witness seat it becomes hard to figure out how to manage the response to then interpret the record of who spoke when if you're here and you've not testified and you have something to offer please make a note of it and let us know so that we can get you on the witness list we're happy to hear from those people who have something to contribute in fact we're really welcoming so welcome Ashley thank you and I want to clarify too that my testimony is not focused on the tip minimum wage just because I was early I was supposed to be speaking a little bit later and then scheduling topics so at this point I think most of you are familiar with Main Street Alliance we're a small business organization statewide we have about 600 members and we are really committed to elevating the voices of small businesses on public policy we have been working with our members in some form for a number of years on this issue through surveys and then this summer we hosted a working group too with any business owner who wanted to join to discuss kind of a lay of the land what the legislature was looking at what the study committee was looking at and then coming together to kind of develop what we see is the best path forward so we I'll go through the survey Ron if you want to scroll down a little bit I'll have to look at it oh okay I'm not the most obsessed so I'll just start to talk a little bit about our survey we as an organization we're consistently doing an ongoing door-to-door in-person survey with small businesses statewide we surveyed on the issue of minimum wage and I have data here from the last couple of years the first the first year the survey was 2016 the respondents were oh sorry yes the number of respondents for the surveys was 230 I didn't realize that I had written that there and we asked respondents if they supported raising the minimum wage to 1250 and you can see the differences between the two years they're actually fairly similar in the responses that businesses said in 2016 that 65% said there would be no impact and in 2017 58 said no impact and then the percentage is decreased for modest and significant impact so this was just the purpose of these questions was really to just see how businesses the bottom lines would be impacted by raising minimum wage to different levels and this was a little bit before the legislature was publicly I think discussing moving to 15 we also asked them what the impact would be raising the minimum wage to $15 and you can see that a significant number said no impact but then also a fairly large number said significant impact and then we asked questions about if this respondents would support raising the minimum wage to 1250 and to 15 over time and you can see that there is question I just want to be clear the question you're asking is that me 1250 now 15 now or 2024? Yeah that's a great question so the language and the survey didn't specify but the respondent informed the survey participants that it was the standard practice to have it be trajectory over time essentially so in 2016 and 17 we didn't survey on this in 2017 sorry in 2016 we found that there was strong support for going to minimum wage of 1250 1250 an hour and then in 2016 and 17 when we surveyed on support for raising the minimum wage to 15 over time we still found strong support in both years for raising over time and so these survey results in all of the issues that we work on I think we've talked about these results that we've done for our family medical insurance and other issues they're not these don't set our policy positions but they help our board in leadership form what our policy positions are and so these survey results we also brought to our working group which we helped this summer which had I think it was around 25 business owners from eight different counties we had really good turnout we thought for this and we brought these survey results to the working group we went over any data we had related to minimum wage again talked about what the legislature was looking at with the rationales behind raising the minimum wage what other states have done we did some education and then had a facilitated discussion about exactly what kind of path forward could we envision and I think just as an organization we try really hard to not say no to things that are a challenge we really try to find a compromise in any way that we can and so that's really was laid the groundwork for the conversation was we're not going to say that you know this is something that we don't believe in because we all around the table believed in raising the minimum wage to some level it was just a matter of what exactly is the trajectory and so that was how we began our conversation and so from this working group we developed collectively developed a proposal which if you scroll down representative Howard to here this was what we came up with which essentially says that we support the goal of getting to $15 an hour overtime and the trajectory that we recommend is based on essentially taking the language that exists in current statute that says we suggest that says the minimum wage increases will increase annually by inflation or CPI whichever is less and change it to say whichever is more until you reach your goal of $15 and so at that timeline you can see that we would get 1477 in 2025 and so this was the proposal that from the study group we all recommended we developed and recommended to the study committee in the senate and also testified to the senate economic development committee to say that this was the timeline that we felt made the most sense and ultimately we support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and we wanted to make sure that we could do it in a way that really worked for this whole business community so so this was the this was our is our recommendation as an organization thank you Ashley was there any talk among your businesses about how we did this as a trial and let more rural areas adjust accordingly I know it's a different dynamic rural versus north city have they had that discussion yeah so I think just in general are members and business owners that I've spoken with feel that when we talk about things like minimum wage that the purpose of it is to be a minimum standard and so regardless of the location of the state it wouldn't make sense to have different standards for different locations even though recognizing that rural areas, businesses in rural areas generally face challenges with fewer customers and having a harder time finding employees that all of these things were taken into consideration when this proposal was put together Representative Christie during the discussion uh dovetailing on Representative Strong's comment was it the concern that if there were different let's say by county let's say one county was at 12 and another one was at 10 that there'd be migrations part of the conversation I think yeah I think just in general there is the belief that and I mean it just seems there's I don't have data to back this up but we can understand how if certain areas of the state were paying better wages than others then it may impact their ability to find qualified employees also I would imagine but I think these were conversations that were had in the working group but they're not necessarily actually thanks I want to thank you for not for coming at us with that proposed solution instead of just that we don't like it we like it and it's compromised there so thank you for that that's refreshing and um the only comment I would make is the only thing that would be uncomfortable with a static percentage is that especially through the time the sequence of four years whether it's 2020 or 2026 is that it it negates the effect of the economy you could have a recession in there you could have a boom in there and businesses react one way or the other with you know right now we're all overpaying because there's greater demand and if you go the other way that would be you know really kind of like my only issue with approaching it that way with a static percentage number you just kind of get locked into something without taking the external forces into consideration that's why I like the inflationary index right right so yeah and there might be other other economic indicators that it could follow that take into account and I just want to reiterate we're supportive of minimal wage we support getting to a minimal wage that we feel is a livable wage that would help people sustain their livelihoods and we leave it up to you know your discretion to figure out the timeline but this is what we recommended from our working groups thank you so Ron where do we stand in our efforts to try and encourage people who are on the after middle list they like their spot they like their spot fair enough you're thinking for different reasons some are help square out buildings we're still formulating their thoughts well fair enough and hopefully we won't have a long floor so we'll be able to get through this afternoon I'll just remind members that we're usual at a point where we're scheduling for next week and so if you know of people who are interested in testifying the people that you want to have clarified points I know different members have passed on ideas already and as I've gotten in my featherweight run but I'm really hoping that we can focus what testimony we need next week we'll have the public hearing a week from today and that we'll be in a position to vote this early the following week so now is the time to bring forward any names or ideas topics that we want to see developed more fully