OCEAN CITY, Md.- It's breakfast hour at The Bayside Skillet restaurant in Ocean City. Sid Zweigbaum has a business to run but a new bill proposed in Maryland could change things for his restaurant, "We're all in the restaurant business coming out of the most difficult two years of any of our lives, even worse than 2008 and 2009. Now you're going to double everyone's labor costs."
House Bill 1256 would stop employers from counting tips that servers receive as part of their wages, forcing employers to pay them the state's minimum wage plus their earned tips.
Some people like Basil Hamlon, who frequently enjoys a meal out, say this bill is not just going to hurt the restaurants, "Going to be passed on to the consumer, the manager, the company, whoever has to recoup those monies from somewhere and the only way they're going to do that is to increase the cost of product to the consumer."
But Zweigbaum does see some positive in the bill, "I definitely could see where the bill could help somebody that's working at a small, slow restaurant, you know, and they're they are putting an eight hour day and then they've got three tables and it is not you know, it's not a great situation for that person."
Prince George's County Delegate Veronica Turner, who created House Bill 1256, says it adds on to the fight that will give Maryland a $15 dollar minimum wage by 2025.