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It is not tipping that most needs to end, however. What needs to change is the federal law that sets the minimum wage for tipped workers at $2.13 an hour, compared with an already measly hourly minimum of $7.25 for other workers. Under the law, as long as $2.13 an hour plus tips works out to at least $7.25 an hour, an employer is in compliance with national labor standards. In effect, a tip for the waitress is a wage subsidy for her employer.

In recent decades, the situation has become increasingly unfair. The sub-minimum “tipped” wage was first instituted in 1966, when it was set at 50 percent of the minimum wage. At the time, that was an improvement. Until then, the restaurant industry had successfully lobbied Congress to deny tipped workers any minimum-wage protection, leaving them to live on tips alone. Over the next 30 years, the tipped wage sometimes rose as high as 60 percent of the minimum wage, but it never fell below 50 percent, reaching its current level of $2.13 an hour in 1991.

Then, in 1996, the Republican-led Congress agreed to raise the minimum wage, but on the condition that the tipped wage remain frozen. It has not budged since, and today it is 29 percent of the minimum wage.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/tips-and-poverty.html?ref=todayspaper