Call Your Maryland legislators Now. Ask your delegate and state senator to take action. 

Over half of Maryland restaurant workers are people of color and nearly half are women employed mainly in casual restaurants where wages and tips are limited.

The recent minimum wage increase in Maryland also does not apply to tipped workers, such as restaurant servers, for whom the minimum wage is $3.63 before tips. 

Women who work in casual restaurants, in particular, struggle with the highest rates of economic insecurity and sexual harassment in any industry because they must tolerate inappropriate customer behavior to feed their families in tips. Since COVID-19, 40% of workers have reported a noticeable increase in levels of unwanted sexualized comments from customers, and hundreds of essential women service workers reported comments b

This proposed legislation will help change this. 

Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association, the leading group lobbying against fair wage legislation and minimum wage increases, uses money paid by restaurant workers for barebones but required food safety courses into a lobbying fund against workers seeking higher wages and better working conditions. Check out the New York Times article that reported this.