HB 94 – Minimum Wage for Tipped Workers

State Representative Kim Williams introduced a bill last month that seeks to improve and update minimum wage law in Delaware, much of which has not been updated since 1983.

Back then, tipped wage workers were paid a percentage – 66.67% – of the minimum wage, which was $3.35 an hour, so that tipped workers would receive $2.23 per hour. In 1989, the General Assembly changed the hourly wage for a tipped worker to a flat $2.23 per hour, where it has outrageously remained ever since, to the everlasting shame of every single elected Senator and Representative and Governor in office during the last 31 years. Had the calculation been left unchanged back in 1989, the tipped wage would have increased along with the minimum wage.

House Bill 94 Sponsors	Yes Votes	No Votes
K.Williams, Kowalko Bentz, Brady, Minor-Brown, Morrison, Osienski, Wilson-Anton
Walsh, Pinkney, Sokola, Sturgeon
Current Status — House Economic Everything Committee 1/28/21

House Bill 94 ensures that employees who receive tips or gratuities also receive a minimum wage increase when other employees in the State receive a minimum wage increase. Specifically, the bill says that tipped workers would receive no less than 65% of the whatever the current minimum wage is. Right now, the current minimum wage is increasing in steps over the next few years. As of October of 2019, the minimum wage is still criminally low at $9.25 an hour. 65% of that is $6.01 an hour. Again, still criminally low. But it is at least a significant increase over $2.23 an hour.