To the editor:

Many Hoosier voters don’t know that Indiana’s minimum wage is really $2.13 per hour. That is what waiters and waitresses make at many restaurants in Indiana. That is how little I made as a waiter in 1996.

Tipped restaurant workers depend on tips. But when restaurants use the tipped workers to take and package orders for carry out or delivery, the servers make no tips. A waitress I know complained to me that her employer made her take and package 87 to go orders in one shift. She made no tips. She was paid only $2.13 per hour. She could not live on that. So, she quit and went to a different restaurant to wait tables and get tips.

Indiana law outlaws slavery. But $2.13 per hour amounts to “slave wages”. It is time to help those who are being abused and mistreated by Indiana’s $2.13 per hour minimum wage. Tell the legislature and the governor to GIVE THEM A RAISE.

Woodrow Wilcox, Dyer