Nevada workers who rely on tips would suffer as a result of a provision in the bill to raise the federal minimum wage that recently passed the House of Representatives, Democrats and union leaders said on Wednesday.

Nevada AFL-CIO leader Danny Thompson and Democratic congressional candidate Tessa Hafen said at a rally in Henderson Wednesday they supported raising the minimum wage, but not the way the House did last week. The House bill raises the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour but includes a provision on tip-earners in states whose minimums are higher than the federal level.

If a Nevada ballot measure passes for the second time in November, the state's minimum wage would be $1 higher than the federal level, triggering the provision, which would allow employers to count tips against employees' hourly wages, according to Democrats and some independent analysts.

Thompson said the provision would affect 130,000 Nevada workers. He noted that the Nevada Legislature has repeatedly killed several similar measures because the large number of Nevada workers who earn tips -- such as cocktail servers and valets -- would be hurt by such a proposal.

"This bill is a travesty. It should not pass the U.S. Senate," Thompson said. "Thank God Sen. (Harry) Reid is doing everything he can to hold it up."

Thompson and Hafen singled out Hafen's opponent, Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., for his vote on the House bill.

"The problem with this bill that Jon Porter voted for is that it overturns the provisions in law in Nevada that protect tip earners," Thompson said.

Hafen said Porter's vote for the measure smacked of an election-eve conversion.

"Democrats tried several times to pass a minimum wage increase, and every time, Jon Porter voted against it," Hafen, a former Reid aide, said. "Then suddenly, in the dead of night with an election looming, Jon Porter voted in favor of it, but only if it came along with another tax break for the rich."

The minimum wage hike bill also included a provision extending cuts in the federal estate tax. Hafen said that was unacceptable.

"There should have been a straight up-or-down vote on the minimum wage and a separate vote on the tax issue," she said. She characterized the Republicans' actions as "game-playing."

Porter spokesman T.J. Crawford called the complaints sour grapes.

"What we're hearing now from the Democrats is unfortunate," he said. "They've been calling for the minimum wage increase for a long time. But the Republicans are the ones who got it done, so now the Democrats are trying to confuse the issue and complaining about it. It sounds like they don't want a minimum wage increase for Nevadans."

Crawford denied that the bill would hurt tip-earners. "Their minimum wage is going up as well," he said. "They are going to earn more money." The claim that tip-earners would be hurt, he said, was "factually incorrect."

Crawford said the bill that included the minimum wage increase included other worthy provisions, such as the estate tax provision and a provision that allows Nevadans to continue to deduct sales tax from their federal taxes.

"These are all tax proposals that he (Porter) has supported for a long time," Crawford said.