22
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, APR. 15-21, 2022 BXR
For NYC’s Black restaurant workers,
the subminimum tipped wage traces back to slavery
BY ROBBIE SEQUEIRA
Much of the convalescing restaurant
industry’s disconcert can be traced to the
Great Resignation — a mass exodus of
more than 33,000 workers from their job
during the pandemic amid low pay and
burnout — and the fix for many lies in
a nationwide effort by industry workers
to eliminate the subminimum wage for
tipped workers.
Alisha Brody’s resignation reckoning
came on Nov. 11, 2021, when she walked
out of a shift at a Grand Concourse food
chain after working three overtime
shifts and seeing very little in terms of
money and gratitude. For her, the experience
of Black tipped-workers is one of
constant insecurity both in competition
with their white peers and the mistreatment
from management and patrons they
rely on for a living wage.
Black workers, despite accounting
for a majority of the tipped service industry,
are on the low end of the wage
scale. A survey by One Fair Wage found
that prior to the pandemic, Black tipped
workers’ income, including tips, was
already substantially lower than their
white counterparts’ earnings, with 60%
of them reporting earning less than
$15 per hour, compared to 43% of white
workers.
“It feels subhuman to be a service employee
sometimes because the demands
and the hours don’t ever match up or the
poor treatment and low wages, ” said
Brody. “For me, my last stop was working
at this place during the pandemic, being
away from my baby, and still be broke
and mistreated.”
On Monday, the U.S. Deputy Secretary
of Labor Julie Su toured various NYC
restaurants spotlighting the need for full
$15 per hour minimum wage with tips
for restaurant workers as the restaurant
industry grapples with a severe staffing
shortage.
In 43 states and on the federal level,
tipped workers are paid as little as $2.13
per hour in direct wages, with tips making
up the balance of the federal minimum
wage, which remains stagnant
at $7.25 per hour. The federal Raise the
Wage Act, would boost the federal minimum
wage for tipped workers to $4.95
this year and then by $2 per year until it
is equal to a $15 federal minimum wage.
At three NYC restaurants, Baodega in
According to a survey of restaurant workers conducted by One Fair Wage in 2021, 88% of Black workers
reported that their tips have decreased since the start of the pandemic, compared to 78% of
white workers. Photo Noam Galai | Getty Images
Manhattan, Skal Restaurant in Brooklyn
and Wasabi Point in Queens, Su, the
deputy labor secretary, performed the
duty of restaurant server for an hour
spotlighting the struggles of restaurant
workers earning a subminimum wage for
tipped workers and too often being forced
to tolerate inappropriate behavior from
customers, managers and co-workers in
order to earn tips.
The tour was designed to draw attention
to the success of “High Road Kitchens”
— restaurants that participated in a
pandemic-created program in which governors
and mayors across the country, including
in New York City, partnered with
One Fair Wage to provide grants to restaurants
that committed to paying a full
minimum wage, plus tips — especially
during the staffing crisis.
One Fair Wage – a national coalition
organized around the movement to increase
wages for service workers – announced
in February that it is embarking
on a $25 million campaign to remove
the subminimum tipped wage in 25 states
by 2026, marking the 250th anniversary
of U.S. independence.
Inequality.org, a data-driven wealth
equality portal, traces the roots of subminimum
tipped wages to post-Civil War
America where restaurants and railway
companies relied on the practice since
they didn’t have to pay wages to recently
freed slaves.
“Ending the subminimum wage
would also abolish a shameful relic of
slavery. Tipping became prevalent in the
United States after the Civil War, when
restaurants and railway companies embraced
the practice because it meant they
didn’t have to pay wages to recently freed
slaves. The racial biases that created the
practice of tipping are still prevalent in
the industry today,” according to the
website.
Since the pandemic, 88% of Black
tipped workers, compared to just 68% of
all workers surveyed, have seen their tips
plunge by half or more. For Black service
industry workers, the end of the subminimum
wage could be an advance for curbing
systemic racism in the workplace
“If we are committed to ending systemic
racism in the workplace, passing a
living wage bill for tipped and non-tipped
low-wage workers is essential to reducing
inequality,” said Tanya Wallace-Gobern,
executive director of the National Black
Worker Center Project, in a February
briefing.
According to the National Restaurant
Association’s State of the Industry
Mid-Year Update, three out of every four
restaurant owners now report employee
hiring and retention as their greatest difficulty,
and many have loudly blamed unemployment
benefits as the reason workers
aren’t returning to restaurants.
However, according to a report released
by Joblist in July, 38% of former
restaurant workers surveyed stated that
they would no longer be seeking work in
the hospitality industry that fired them
— citing poor management, low pay and
harmful workplace experiences.
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