Waging Change

                                                                    March 2021

 

 

01:00:06:16     Man VO:  People have no idea.  People just think everybody gets the minimum wage, right.

 

01:00:13:01     Woman VO:  Our integrity is compromised every single day.

 

01:00:17:00     Man VO:  I love what I do, but I don’t like the way I get paid.

 

01:00:20:06     Man VO:  I’ve had to hold down three jobs at once because my tips were so bad.

 

01:00:24:04     Woman VO:  I feel like I’m working for nothing.

 

01:00:29:00     Woman VO:  Doing this work has helped me see that we can make a difference, that we can make change.  Not just make change, we can force change.

 

01:00:43:19     Bill Maher (on Real Time with Bill Maher): This blew my mind.  The minimum wage for tipped workers is two dollars and thirteen cents an hour, and in some states it’s better than that, but some states that’s the national, two, that’s like Chinese iPod factory level wages.  Two thirteen and....

 

01:01:01:04     Saru Jayaraman:  Well, actually when you earn two-thirteen, you actually don’t get anything at all, because your wage goes entirely to taxes, so you literally get a paycheck that says, this is not a paycheck.

 

01:01:12:01     Jessica Wynter Martin: It was disheartening, soul crushing to open up a paycheck and see zero.

 

01:01:17:20     Andrea Velasquez: If I didn’t make tips all week and then I get a check that says, void, this is not a check, you’re not making anything.  You can’t make rent, you can’t make your ends meet.

 

01:01:47:20     Saru Jayaraman:  The reason that you’ve got the largest and one of the most profitable and fastest-growing industries in America, paying the absolute lowest-paying wages in this country is because of the power and influence of a trade lobby called the National Restaurant Association.

 

01:02:02:08     Nataki Rhodes:  Good morning, everybody!  We fired up, ready to go?  All right!

 

01:02:13:23     Saru Jayaraman:  The National Restaurant Association is the most organized and powerful employer lobby in Congress.  We call it the other NRA.

 

01:02:23:07     crowd chanting at protest

 

01:02:42:09     Sylvia Allegretto:  The NRA’s most active members are chain restaurants like Denny’s, Olive Garden, Applebee’s, and IHOP.  They have enormous influence, and OS: they’re trying to protect the restaurant industry.  They do not wanna pay higher wages.

 

01:02:58:16     Saru Jayaraman:  In the United States, we have a two-tiered wage system.  There is a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25, but tipped workers are allowed to be paid a sub-minimum wage of $2.13 an hour, as long as tips bring them to the full minimum wage.

 

01:02:19:14     Jan Schakowsky:  The forces of the status quo are very powerful.  They’re institutionalized.  We have the National Restaurant Association.  We even have people here in the Congress who don’t believe there should be any minimum wage.

 

01:03:31:06     Sylvia Allegretto:  It is no surprise that the $2.13 an hour has been stuck there since 1991.  There was a deal brokered between Congress and the NRA to say, okay, we’ll let you increase the regular minimum wage, but we want the sub-minimum wage frozen permanently at $2.13 an hour.

 

01:03:50:06     Mark Bittman:  When you reveal to people that tipped workers make as little as $2.13 an hour, most people are shocked by that.  And to think that you could be making two dollars and have to rely on five dollars an hour worth of tips to make just seven dollars is a scary thing.  So this is as just and important a struggle as there is right now.

 

01:04:12:05     Sylvia Allegretto:  I don’t think most consumers know that their tips are actually not gratuity in many situations, that it’s actually a subsidy towards the employer that goes to the worker’s wage bill.  And they’re pretty shocked about it, actually.

 

01:04:28:00     Saru Jayaraman:  This is a gender equity issue.  This is a race equity issue.  This is actually a legacy of slavery.

 

01:04:33:15     archival photos and footage

 

01:04:43:23     Graylan Hagler:  People really did not wanna pay newly freed black folks a wage.  They wanted to keep people in a subservient position where they had to bow and grin and scrape in order to get some money to survive.

 

01:04:56:11     Saru Jayaraman:  Restaurant owners were allowed to pay zero dollars an hour and let tipped workers live on tips, which meant that the very first wage for tipped workers was zero.  And we’ve gone up over a hundred years to the current federal minimum wage for tipped workers, which is $2.13 an hour.

 

01:05:15:09     Saru Jayaraman:  There are 17 states that are at the absolute bottom of the barrel with a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers at $2.13 an hour.  Another 26 states set their tipped wage rates above $2.13 an hour, but below their regular state minimum wage.  But seven states, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Minnesota, and Alaska, require the restaurant industry to pay the full minimum wage plus tips.

 

01:05:47:13     Fatima Goss Graves:  If you work in a state where there is a tipped minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference between that base pay of $2.13 and whatever you didn’t make to get you up to minimum wage.  So if you’re a worker and you’ve worked a shift and you didn’t have very many customers, and all of a sudden at the end of the night you didn’t actually make that money, your employer needs to make up the difference.

 

01:06:15:12     Wardell Harvey:  But most people don’t be knowing their rights, they don’t know the laws, they don’t know how it works, meaning if you don’t work and make a certain amount of money in a 40-hour week, the company’s supposed to give you that other portion of money.  That’s like non-existent.  It doesn’t exist.  People don’t know to argue about it.

 

01:06:39:05     Saru Jayaraman:  Wage and tip theft is so rampant in the restaurant industry that the U.S. Department of Labor says that we have the highest rates of violation of wage and tip laws of any industry in the United States.

 

01:06:52:20     Andrea Velasquez:  If you haven’t made any money, they’re supposed to match that, that you at least have minimum wage for the week.  Most of the time, that doesn’t happen, and I’ve certainly never met an employer that has said, “Hey, remind me if I owe you any money.”

 

01:07:30:00     Lacresha Clark:  It’s a struggle to just get by.  I have three kids.  I have to have two part-time jobs because I’m a mom, but it still is not enough.  So I have to get food stamps from the state.  I still get Medicaid from the state also for my babies.  It’s a struggle to be able to do things for my kids because of this, the way I get paid.  Now the tips, you know, 3 dollars an hour is definitely not enough, 4 dollars an hour is not enough.

 

01:07:59:21     Sylvia Allegretto:  70 percent of tipped workers are women.  They’re women who work at IHOP, Applebee’s, and diners all across America, and they suffer from two times the poverty rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce.  Nearly half of tipped workers rely on public subsidies to make ends meet.

 

01:08:18:18     Saru Jayaraman:  We are subsidizing multimillion dollar corporations in two ways.  We pay almost entirely for these workers’ wages through our tips.  But we’re also paying for taxpayer-funded public assistance in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, emergency room use, all the different ways that workers have to find a way to survive and can’t on the wages that they earn.

 

01:88:45:10     Wardell Harvey:  I always have worked either another job, or you have to do something else to make ends meet.  Really at this point, what you can afford to do is pay bills and no extra.  These are the type of things you just kinda get used to and don’t complain about them, because it becomes everyday life.  But that’s not the American dream.  It’s not the American way.

 

01:09:12:23     Aubrey Walkins:  Absolutely every restaurant that I worked in, I have stories of managers trying to take advantage of me, of drunk guys try to like take me and dance with me and grab me, and when you’re out there on the floor, you don’t necessarily feel safe.

 

01:09:33:13     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  I remember working in restaurants, and you would have someone say something extremely inappropriate to you, or you’d have someone touch you, and the thing is it would be the 28^th of the month, the 29^th of the month, and the first of the next month was rolling right around and you had a rent check to pay.  And so you are more likely to stand up for yourself and to reject sexual harassment on the 15^th of the month or maybe the 10^th of the month, when you could pick up an extra shift to make up for telling that guy to go buzz off.  But on the 28^th of the month or the 29^th of the month, you will let that person touch you because of your economic desperation.

 

01:10:16:22     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  It’s not just about, oh, I need to accept this because I’m gonna get a tip.  It’s about the actual instability of the environment that you have.  What happens if I complain about this?  Will my shift be changed?  There’s a lot of fear around retribution just for standing up for yourself.

 

01:10:33:08     Andrea Velasquez:  I was working at a sports bar, and it was during March Madness.  We were really busy.  I was in the middle of taking an order, like at the table, pen in hand, writing it down, talking to my customers, and I was kinda bent over because I was leaning over talking to the customers, and this guy came up behind me and just full on grabbed me.  I mean, full on.  And I didn’t know what to do.  I was flabbergasted.  I mean, what do you do?  So I went and told my manager, and they said, oh, well, boys will be boys, we need their money, it’s March Madness, he’s gonna keep paying money for beer all night.  So he got a full-on grope and I had to just deal with it.

 

01:11:17:19     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  About half of all Americans work in a restaurant at some point in their lives, and especially when young women work in restaurants, they learn to accept harassment as a normal thing.  And then you get out of that restaurant, you’ve already started to condition yourself to accept undignified behavior, and so it has long-term effects.

 

01:11:40:11     Saru Jayaraman:  It’s not like there are poverty wages for tipped workers and there’s sexual harassment.  No.  This is actually the same issue, because when you force a woman to earn her tips as the majority of her income, she is way more vulnerable to harassment.

 

01:11:59:05     Jane Fonda:  Lily and I are here in Michigan to join with Saru to try to raise the profile of this effort to get One Fair Wage on the ballot.

 

01:12:09:17     Lily Tomlin:  Hi, how are you?

01:12:10:15     Jane Fonda:  Hi.  Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin.  We’re both actors.  We’re right now in a series called “Grace and Frankie,” and we were in “Nine to Five,” but much more important is that we’re here with Restaurant Opportunities United because we wanna get One Fair Wage on the ballot next November.

Man:  Okay.

Jane Fonda:  It’s a way that will raise the wages not just for everybody, but for tipped workers.

Lily Tomlin:  Have you ever worked as a waiter?

Man:  I’m a tipped worker.

Lily Tomlin:  You are a tipped worker?

Jane Fonda:  You’re a tipped worker.

 

01:12:45:10     Jane Fonda:  I didn’t realize that there was a two-tiered system.  When we talk about raising the minimum wage, most of the time it doesn’t include tipped workers, and I was ignorant of that.

 

01:12:55:07     Lily Tomlin:  We’re trying to get it on the ballot in 2018, where they’d have a minimum wage across the board and they’d get their tips as well.

Woman:  That’s awesome. 

 

01:13:03:03     Lily Tomlin:  Once you pay a worker $3.38 an hour, nobody is gonna be respectful of them or treat them as a professional, and most servers really do think of themselves as a professional.  Even I as a young girl, I wanted to have great service and a good turnover and satisfaction, and I went in to work every day with that in mind.

 

01:13:25:22     Jane Fonda:  There’s been this question about, well, why would celebrities come here and talk about One Fair Wage?  You know, why are you sticking your neck out?  It’s a human issue.  If you don’t know a problem exists, you’re ignorant, and that’s not good, but it’s ignorance.  If you know a problem exists and you don’t do anything about it, then you’re part of the problem.

 

01:14:01:06     Sylvia Allegretto:  The Fight For Fifteen started with fast food workers, who are not tipped, and neither are cooks, dishwashers, and other back of the house employees, so the Fight For Fifteen affects millions of people.

 

01:14:16:10     Saru Jayaraman:  Unfortunately, not every city or state that’s passed 15 dollars has included tipped workers.  So we need both 15 and one fair wage.

 

01:14:32:02     Scott Defife:  Fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage as a starting wage in the restaurant industry is just really not realistic in today’s economy.

 

01:14:40:03     Phil Mendelson:  Well, either there’ll be fewer jobs because restaurants have this huge increase in their payroll, or that tipped workers will be getting less.

 

01:14:49:20     Scott Defife:  For most restaurant operators, it would significantly increase costs, drive prices up, and likely create less jobs.

 

01:14:57:16     Jan Schakowsky:  Actually, in the places that have raised the minimum wage, none of the nightmare scenarios happened.  One of the excuses, of course, is that employers are not gonna be able to afford to pay these increased wages, and they’re gonna have to lay people off.  That just simply hasn’t happened.

 

01:15:18:11     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  In California, they made all tipped wages equal to regular hourly wages, and we find that business is booming, that wages are up, that people tip on top, that none of these fears really play out.

 

01:15:34:17     Reporter:  States that pay full minimum wage to tipped workers actually saw stronger growth than states that pay less.

 

01:15:41:09     Saru Jayaraman:  These 7 states are faring better on every measure: higher restaurant sales per capita, higher job growth in the restaurant industry, far less sexual harassment, even better rates of tipping.

 

01:15:53:18     Reporter:  The next time you go into a restaurant, take a look around.  Often the people waiting tables and making tips are white, while most people working in the kitchen for relatively less money are black or brown.

 

01:16:06:17     Joel Leon:  I’ve had some gigs, dishwashing gigs, and the people who will usually work the back of the house were people of my skin color.  I’ve been trying to move up, but restaurant owners, like from my experiences, always wanna keep me stagnant to just a dishwasher.  And I explain to them I do wanna move up, I do wanna become a server, and they’re like, well, that’s not what we’re looking for right now.

 

01:16:29:04     Wardell Harvey:  In the restaurant industry, what you’re gonna witness is there’s a big difference between the way they treat what’s called front and back of house, the difference between servers and cooks, line people and hostess.  Depending on race, gender, all these people will be treated different, and which job you’re going to have in this industry.

 

01:16:49:14     Chiedza Kundidzora:  I started in the restaurant industry twelve years ago as a server, was a host for a while, and eventually I understood that the amount of money that I was going to make would be dependent on how my guests perceived me, not the level of service.  I knew that the level of service that I knew how to provide was exemplary.  But when you start incorporating being a woman, being black, all of a sudden people’s implicit biases are dictating how I’m being related to and how I’m making my money.

 

01:17:27:04     Saru Jayaraman: The data shows that customers tip workers of color less.  In fact, we released a report showing that black women tipped workers in New York and Massachusetts earn almost eight dollars an hour less than white men.  And it’s due to two factors: One, the fact that black women are segregated into lower-paying restaurants, but it’s also due to the fact that, when they get into fine dining, if they get into fine dining, and they’re standing right by a white man, they get tipped less.

 

01:17:58:16     Stephanie Murphy: Six months ago, we stood here in this room together to announce the introduction of the Raise The Wage Act.  And I’m proud to say that today, later today the House will pass that bill.

 

01:18:10:02     Man:  On this vote, the yeas are 231 and the nays are 199.  This bill is passed.

 

01:18:18:20     Hakeem Jeffries:  We came together in a historic vote to pass One Fair Wage, to raise the wage to $15 per hour equally applied to everyone, including tipped workers, and now we have to finish the job in the United States Senate.  We’re gonna go out, we’re gonna get this done, one fair wage for every single person in the United States of America.

 

01:18:54:05     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  I of course am already thinking about where we need to go in the future, right, so once we get this, now we need to start pushing for even more protections for all workers in this country.

 

01:19:13:08     Gavin Newsom: We are directing that all bars, nightclubs, wineries, be closed in the state of California.

 

01:19:19:02     Mike DeWine: All bars in the state, and all restaurants, will close at nine o’clock.

 

01:19:23:03     Man:  Any bar or restaurant closes at eight o’clock.

 

01:19:27:01     Reporter:  Widespread restaurant closures and massive layoffs have shocked the industry.

 

01:19:30:19     Tom Coliccio:  At least a million people lost their job yesterday in the hospitality industry.

 

01:19:33:15     Reporter:  Once crowded and full of life, bars and restaurants are now struggling to survive.  One recent report predicts up to 230,000 restaurants could permanently close by the end of the year.

 

01:19:46:04     Reporter:  Six million of the 23 million people who lost a job early in the pandemic work in the food and beverage industry.  Servers, bartenders, kitchen staff, and more have been left in the lurch, many without paid sick leave, paid time off, or benefits.

 

01:20:01:21     Damani Varnado:  We’ve been devastated, and I say devastated not just for front of the house, back of the house, immigrants that were working without any kind of legal status.

 

01:20:10:04     Saru Jayaraman:  The pandemic really revealed what I call the pre-existing condition in the restaurant industry, the dysfunction of the sub-minimum wage, the untenability of the whole system for both workers and employers.

 

01:20:22:17     Reporter:  Millions of full-time workers who have been laid off are finding out they made too little to qualify for unemployment benefits.  People who work in restaurants, bars, and salons make their living off tips, and many of these tipped workers earn wages that don’t qualify for unemployment.

 

01:47:18:20     Reporter:  Furloughed for months, many were not even eligible to collect unemployment.

 

01:20:38:08     Damani Varnado: I know myself and other servers really struggled with collecting unemployment benefits.  Because of that sub-minimum wage, a lotta times servers are not able to qualify for unemployment  benefits.

 

01:20:52:23     Saru Jayaraman: When they are using food banks, using emergency medical care, spreading the pandemic because they have no care, no choice, no home, no food, that affects all of us.  If we learn nothing else from the pandemic, it is that we are interdependent.

 

01:21:09:22     Reporters: For the first time since March, New York City restaurants will open for indoor dining.  Indoor dining returned, but how safe is it really?

 

01:21:19:07     Saru Jayaraman: So workers are being called back to work for a sub-minimum wage to expose themselves and their family to the virus in essentially a super-spreader location, when tips are down.

 

01:21:31:05     Reporter:  With restaurants at fifty percent capacity, restaurant employees tell us tips are down just as much.

 

01:21:38:04     Damani Varnado:  People are recognizing if, in fact, people have been relying upon their salary, on tips, and they’re not getting them, well, then how are they getting paid?

 

01:21:46:13     Reporter:  Protesters made their way here to Philadelphia City Hall to bring awareness to the disparity they say restaurant workers are facing.

 

01:21:55:07     Tsehaitu Abye at protest: The person who brings your food is worth more than $2.83.

 

01:21:59:18     Ashley Grumman: For essential restaurant workers, it’s putting your life at risk to go to your jobs every day.

 

01:22:05:20     Reporter:  A risk they feel comes with very little reward.

 

01:22:09:04     Damani Varnado: Restaurant workers are being health care administrators by taking your temperature, they are being health care marshals by making sure that you have your mask on, and then expecting that your customer is gonna be able to give you a fair tip.  That’s a hard ask.

 

01:22:24:05     Saru Jayaraman: We just surveyed two thousand workers.  And the overwhelming numbers of comments from women said sexual harassment got worse with the pandemic.

 

01:22:49:08     Saru Jayaraman:  It’s a public health disaster, because the workers are saying customers are belligerent, they don’t listen, they’re not gonna put on their masks, and if I push them, they yell at me, they’re not giving me a tip, and I desperately need those tips.

 

01:23:05:15     Rep. Chuy Garcia at protest: Here in Illinois, tipped workers are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as other workers.

 

01:23:13:16     Nataki Rhodes at protest: We are here today to say we are ending the legacy of slave wages.  We are ending the legacy of sub-minimum wage here in our great state of Illinois.

 

01:23:31:22     Woman at protest in New York City:  We are coming together today to put an end to the sub-minimum wage, and we will keep coming back until nobody in this country works for $2.13 an hour.

 

01:23:42:05     Saru Jayaraman:  Thousands of workers saying, “I’m not gonna go back to work without one fair wage.”  We saw in many towns the majority of employers finding that they just had to pay a full minimum wage to get any employees to come back.

 

01:23:56:20     Reporter:  The chef and owner Russell Jackson pays his staff more than the minimum wage and all tips are shared.  It’s exactly what the advocacy group One Fair Wage is pushing for.

 

01:24:06:00     Russell Jackson: COVID is tearing us down to the stud right now.  You kinda look at it as a two-edged sword.  It’s a systemic problem that has always existed.  Now because it’s being torn down, we get to rebuild it in a way that’s really efficient and proper, and the One Fair Wage Act is really one of those key cornerstones that’s gonna help us to continue to build in a better way.

 

01:24:25:15     Damani Varnado: So many of the owners that I’ve been working with recognize that paying a full federal minimum wage plus tips and allowing for tip sharing is beneficial for them as well, because it has them to be able to keep workers that feel supported and stable in their place of work, that allows for the owners to have less hirings and firings because you have a committed staff.

 

01:24:46:07     Reporter:  There is widespread support from some major restaurants who are like Danny Meyer, David Chang, and Tom Coliccio, who have restaurants not only here in New York City but across the country, and in some cases, all over the world.

 

01:24:57:18     Danny Meyer: It’s only worth getting back up on our feet as an industry, which this city desperately needs, if we do it the right way.

 

01:25:09:12     Saru Jayaraman: So the pandemic really showed that we cannot go back to the way things were.  We can only go forward to a future in which workers are treated as the skilled professionals that they are, they’re paid a livable wage from their employer, and they’re not having to rely on the whims and biases of customers.

 

01:25:28:23     Damani Varnado: When you confront wage injustice, it allows you to confront all the other injustices that happen in restaurants and throughout our society: sexism, homophobia, ageism, because that’s gonna create the equity that so many people are looking for, and it’s gonna be a more sustainable model as we go towards the future.

 

01:25:49:20     Andrea Velasquez:  Knowing that I can inspire others has given me so much hope to take all those experiences that I went through, and try to find a way to make sure that it does not happen to anyone else.  And that’s my main mission.

 

01:26:03:04     Woong Chang:  As soon as the consumers start demanding that the cooks and the people who serve me my food are treated well, that’s gonna have a huge impact on this industry.

 

01:26:12:20     Saru Jayaraman:  So now there’s a model for employers.  Now there’s a pathway for consumers.  It will just take everybody who eats out to stand by these workers and the people who employ them who actually believe in One Fair Wage.

 

[credits]

 

end 01:26:49:23