A study released by Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York?(ROC-NY),?the?Food Chain Workers Alliance, and?The Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) revealed some sad facts about the result of our system for tipped workers. In a post titled, “Cruel Irony: Food Insecurity of NYC Restaurant Workers“, ROC-NY breaks down the key points:
Key findings:
- An astonishing 41% of NYC restaurant workers surveyed were food insecure
- 67% of undocumented restaurant workers surveyed were food insecure
- Tipped workers in NYC were 30% more likely to be food insecure than their non-tipped counterparts.
The minimum wage for tipped workers is much lower than that of the normal minimum wage. In the article, they go on to point out that Governor Cuomo has the power to administratively raise their pay through a Department of Labor Wage Board. They include a call to action:
TAKE ACTION. Support New York’s tipped workers by tweeting at Governor Cuomo. Urge him to appoint a wage board that will listen to the needs of NY’s tipped workers by eliminating the sub-minimum wage and ensuring #1FairWage in New York. UPDATE: Gov. Cuomo has convened the Wage Board. Join us in calling on the Wage Board to eliminate the sub-minimum wage!
Yet that’s not all that the report showed. The report, based upon “280 surveys and interviews with restaurant workers in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area,” showed an abysmal union membership rate among tipped workers of only 1.8 percent; other workers in the food processing industry showed a slightly better 16 percent membership average. Ninety percent have no benefits.
The percentages of workers that require government food assistance was 20 percent) and the food insecurity rate, by USDA definition, is double among tipped food service workers than that of the general rate. The organizations releasing the report also included recommendations for policymakers:
- Increase the minimum wage and eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers at the federal, state, and local levels. Federal, state, and local policymakers should raise the minimum wage to $15 and index it to automatically rise with inflation.
- Guarantee rights to common employee benefits such as paid sick leave, paid family and medical leave, and other medical benefits.
- Reduce occupational segregation by developing greater pathways for career mobility in the restaurant industry.
- Increase penalties and enforcement for employers who engage in wage theft and other illegal practices.
- Guarantee the right to organize to all workers, and protect against retaliation for organizing.
Some states already have eliminated the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. The entire west coast, in fact, requires that employers pay the full state minimum wage before tips. Unfortunately, that is not true for many tipped service workers in the nation. In many states, tipped service workers rely on the charity of strangers to get by, regardless of the fact they are working and productive (there’s no point to anyone being in poverty, anyway, but I digress).
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I’m a millennial with an attitude, and I’m tired of a left wing that has stopped being willing to rise up and fight for the rights of the people. In my short career, I’ve published hundreds of articles on many topics. You can follow me on Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or?Instagram.
