A crowd of people, many opposed to a bill that would raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, listens during a hearing by the House Committee on Labor in Room 101 at the Rhode Island State House on Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
A smorgasbord of bills on upping the state’s minimum wage went before the labor committees in both chambers of the Rhode Island General Assembly Wednesday night. A big enough crowd was expected that there was an overflow room to watch the House hearing, and it was standing room in the Senate hearing.
The main course: Two proposals to gradually raise the minimum wage for employees who make tips.
Servers and other hospitality workers who depend on tips have had their hourly wages capped at $3.89 since 2017.
That would increase under legislation proposed by Democrats Sen. Tiara Mack of Providence and Rep. Leonela Felix of Pawtucket in their respective chambers. Mack’s bill suggests a one-time increase, upping the minimum wage for tipped workers to $6.75 starting next year. Felix’s bill would gradually raise the minimum wage for tipped workers through 2031. At that point they would reach $15, what is now the standard minimum wage, after it increased a dollar on Jan. 1, 2025.
Mack told the Senate Committee that tipped workers are “an important class of people” in her district. “I represent tons of really great restaurants and tons of really great workers, but many of them, unless they are restaurant owners, have elected on their own to have a standard $15 minimum wage,” she said.
Neither idea wasn’t appetizing to the many restaurateurs who showed up at Wednesday’s hearings, some of whom relayed a sense of déjà vu at having testified on similar bills in the past.
“I’ve been testifying about this so long, it feels like Groundhog Day,” Bob Bacon, co-owner of Gregg’s Restaurants, told the Senate Committee on Labor and Gaming, which heard the tipping bill before the the House Committee on Labor tackled its chamber’s version
Bacon held up a printout of a dollar bill sliced into color-coded portions. For every $1 a customer spends, 64 cents goes to labor. Operating costs, supplies and other fees like credit card processing eat up much of the remaining profit. His business ultimately sees maybe three cents on every dollar.
“If I owned Texas Roadhouse and I was doing $700-$800 million a year, three cents on every dollar, I’d probably be pretty happy with that,” Bacon said.
But Bacon was asked to abandon the visual aid when retelling his testimony to the House’s labor committee about an hour later. Committee Chair Rep. Arthur Corvese, a North Providence Democrat who is deputy majority leader, said, “We do have a rule that bans that type of presentation.”
Bacon’s sentiment still came through. The restaurant business, he told both chambers, is not a gold mine but a copper mine, because, as he said, “We’re a business of pennies.”
Opposition from restaurant owners
That was an argument echoed by other business owners, like Bill Kitsilis, who owns Angelo’s Palace Pizza in Cumberland. The pizza shop proprietor had to leave before his chance to speak in the House, but he told senators his business would have to spend an extra $45,000 to $50,000 a year to cover every $1 increase in the minimum wage for servers.
A good chunk of the House hearing was eaten up by various industry lobbyists who testified against nearly every one of the nine bills on the agenda, but lawmakers also heard testimony from at least one server who supported the bill. Tammy Fuller works as a server at Chomp Kitchen and Drinks in Providence and testified in both the Senate and House.
“I am all of the things that I believe Sen. Mack was in favor of: I’m Black, I am a single mom, and I am completely opposed to it being $15 an hour,” Fuller told senators. “I started out in this business because I needed to raise my child…I have been in this field for 19 years. I would not be in this field at 57 years old if I was still making $15 an hour.”
Fuller told the House committee later that a $15 minimum wage would likely make tips compulsory, “a mere thank you,” instead of “being dispensed to me to be able to feed my family.”
A couple dozen people who did not testify submitted their names to the House committee to record their opposition to the bill. Among the detractors were several prominent local businesses, including multiple members of the family that owns the Chelo’s restaurant chain.
While the tipped minimum wage is lower than the normal minimum wage, employers must make up the difference if an employee does not make enough in tips, according to the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training.
But the system of tipping is too antiquated anyway, thought committee member and Rep. David Morales, a Providence Democrat who introduced the bill on behalf of Felix, who was absent from the meeting.
Morales didn’t want to speak for Felix, but he did offer some of his own thoughts on the legislation, including that the differentiation of minimum wages is a means of denying that “all labor is skilled labor.”
“I think we need to get to a place where we say that if you’re working 60 minutes an hour, that there is a collective notion on what that labor is worth, and that labor should not be subjective, based on the generosity of our fellow neighbors in the form of tips,” Morales said, citing nations that do not specify a separate tipping wage.
All bills were preemptively held for further study, as is standard practice at a bill’s initial hearing.
‘An old Sicilian proverb’
Also heard Wednesday night in the House were two bills that would gradually raise the minimum wage for all workers.
The more modest bill was led in the House by Rep. David Bennett, a Warwick Democrat. In the Senate, there were two versions by Democratic Sens. John Burke of West Warwick and Ana Quezada of Providence. The bills would raise the minimum wage by a dollar a year over the next five years, increasing to $16 an hour in 2026 up to $20 anhour in 2030.
The business lobbyists who testified against the tipping bill also categorically shot down these bills, like Bob Goldberg, who spoke on behalf of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. Goldberg said that he had “tremendous respect” for Bennett in his quest to help people make a livable wage. But he argued that labor comprises the biggest expense for businesses, and would ultimately increase inflation and force businesses to shutter.
Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee, a South Kingstown Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Small Business, said a minimum wage increase might not seem so bizarre in an economic landscape marked by threats of international tariffs emerging from President Donald Trump’s administration.
“How we’re gonna navigate these next few years, I don’t know. I’m just asking. I don’t have the answer. I think we’re headed for a showdown and it’s gonna be bad,” McEntee said.
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t go so many years into the future,” Goldberg offered back, referencing the multiyear structure of Bennett’s bill.
“The public doesn’t have the purchasing power,” McEntee replied as the conversation continued.
Retorted Goldberg: “There’s gonna be nothing to purchase if you close the businesses.”
“True,” McEntee said.
The proposal with the most profound hint of change came from Rep. Enrqiue Sanchez, a Providence Democrat, who suggested the state raise the minimum wage to $22 by Jan. 1, 2026. Sanchez’s bill has two co-sponsors, compared to nine on Bennet’s legislation.
Corverse, who co-sponsored Bennett’s more moderate bill, said to Sanchez, “Right now it’s at $15.”
“Yep,” Sanchez said.
“And now you wanna go to $22. That’s 46.6%,” Corvese said of Sanchez’s proposed increase.
“Hard times call for aggressive measures,” Sanchez replied.
“Hard times make monkeys eat red peppers,” Corvese said. “That’s an old Sicilian proverb.”
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