One Fair Wage Supports Biden’s Plan to Help Workers Who Rely On Tips

One Fair Wage, an organization working to end subminimum wage work in the U.S., hosted a virtual briefing last week. On the agenda was a discussion of the findings of the OFW’s recent report, Ending a Legacy of Slavery. The report advocates for Biden’s COVID-19 relief plan, which would eliminate the subminimum wage for service workers.

Source: NBC News/YouTube

Representatives Brenda Lawrence (D-MI), Andy Levin (D-MI), Danny Davis (D-IL), and Rev. William Barber, Jr. were on the call. Leaders with the organizations She the People, National Black Worker Center Project, and the National Employment Law Project also joined in.

Report Findings

Ending a Legacy of Slavery: How Biden’s COVID Relief Plan Cures the Racist Subminimum Wage, details how the pandemic has disproportionately affected Black tipped restaurant workers. It also documents the racist roots of the subminimum wage.

The following are a few of the report’s key findings:

• Before the pandemic, Black tipped service workers earned less than their white peers.
• During the pandemic, Black tipped workers have faced higher rates of exposure to COVID-19 than other workers.
• It has been harder for Black tipped workers to access unemployment insurance than it has been for other workers during the pandemic.
• Black tipped service workers have seen a relatively steep decline in tips and faced greater hostility from patrons for enforcing health and safety protocols than other workers.

A History of Racism and Misogyny

The report charts the racialized history of restaurant work, drawing a clear through-line from the past to today. It begins with the story of Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old Black grandmother and service worker at a hotel in Baltimore. (Bob Dylan paid tribute to Carroll in the song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” in 1963). Billy Zantzinger, a 24-year-old customer at the hotel bar where Carroll worked, beat her with his cane for not bringing his drink to him fast enough. She died of a stroke shortly afterward.

The report notes that in 1963, Carroll’s wage was $0 an hour. “Today, nearly 60 years later, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is just $2.13 an hour—a $2 increase—and a mostly women, disproportionately women of color tipped workforce still faces the highest levels of harassment of any industry because they must tolerate inappropriate customer behavior to earn nearly all of their income in tips.”

OFW’s report documents the racism and sexism Black and women restaurant workers have and continue to face. And it details the role of the National Restaurant Association in establishing a special subminimum wage for tipped workers. As The Huffington Post has reported, in the 1990s, President Clinton pressured Congress to raise the minimum wage; however, the NRA, led by Herman Cain, lobbied Congress to keep the tipped minimum wage at $2.13 an hour. It’s remained that ever since.

Biden’s Relief Package

Biden’s COVID-19 relief package includes a $15 minimum wage and would phase out the subminimum wage for tipped workers. That means restaurant workers would earn at least minimum wage plus tips. One Fair Wage argues that eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers will help redress the problem of racial and gender inequality in the restaurant industry. The move is also important for public safety, OFG says. If federal legislation ensures restaurant workers a living wage, they are more likely to enforce health and safety regulations, even if doing so leads to a decline in tips from disgruntled patrons.

You can encourage legislatures to enact One Fair Wage legislation here.

Sign these petitions to protect workers’ rights:

• Tell Amazon to Improve Working Conditions and Pay Fair Wages
• Pay H-2A Workers Fair Wages
• Demand Justice for Abused Women on Palm Oil Plantations
• Demand the Indian Government Reverse Laws that Harm Farmworkers

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