Most people who leave tips for servers at restaurants think of it as a reward for good service. But in fact, in most of America, servers are paid a subminimum wage, on the premise that those tips will bring up their pay to what other workers make. In other words, the women and people of color who comprise the vast majority of the service industry are at the mercy of a highly subjective system that often leaves them with lower wages than almost anyone else could legally be paid.

The Biden administration's call to eliminate the subminimum wage and bring servers to the same minimum as everyone else is a matter of basic fairness. And it would make tips a true gesture of reward, not an imperative for survival.

Today, the overall federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour for most workers, but it is just $2.13 an hour for workers in professions where tipping is common. That's the same rate it's been for the past 30 years.

Federal law mandates that if a worker's subminimum wages plus tips don't total at least $7.25 an hour, the employer has to make up the difference — but in the real world, it often doesn't work that way. A federal audit of employment records from 2010 to 2012 found that more than 80% of 9,000 full-service restaurants committed wage violations, often related to improperly calculated wages for tipped workers, resulting in some $5.5 million in ordered back pay. These aren't issues that other hourly workers have to contend with.

Workers who need tips to survive also tend to be more vulnerable to harassment, especially in food service, where most employees are women. More sexual harassment claims are filed in the restaurant industry than any other, with the source of the harassment often being not employers but customers. When a customer has wide latitude over how much a server is getting paid, it's that much harder for the server to confront abuse.

Contrary to the dire predictions of restaurant industry lobbyists who want to maintain the current system, there is no evidence that putting servers under the same minimum as everyone else would hurt restaurant sales or diminish the tips those servers can make on top of their wages. Data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and elsewhere has shown that in the seven states that already put tipped workers under the same minimum wages as everyone else, the restaurant industry is as strong or stronger than elsewhere, tip rates are just as high — and harassment claims are lower.

The worthy movement right now to establish a $15-an-hour national minimum wage would be a hollow victory if it leaves behind America's estimated 6 million tipped workers. They shouldn't have to rely on the generosity of diners just to get what's guaranteed by law to other employees.

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