Widespread Inequality in the Restaurant Industry Means Hardship for Women Workers

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debra-l-ness/restaurant-wages-women_b_1272961.html

There are more than 10 million restaurant workers in the United States. The majority are women. These are the hosts and hostesses who greet us, the waiters and waitresses who serve us, the bartenders who fill our drink orders, the attendants and dishwashers who clean up after us, set up our tables, and more.

Yet, despite the important role restaurant workers play in our lives and our economy, the restaurant industry provides some of the lowest-wage jobs in the nation -- leaving many workers and their families living in poverty. And as a powerful new report released this week reveals, these low wages are just one of many challenges workers in this industry face.

The report, Tipped Over the Edge: Gender Inequity in the Restaurant Industry, was produced by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC), the National Partnership for Women & Families and eleven other women's and worker organizations. It looks at widely accepted practices within the restaurant industry -- based on U.S. Census data and more than 4,300 worker surveys -- revealing harmful trends and recommending modest, common sense solutions.

As the report explains, the restaurant industry is the only industry that has a wage gap established by law, which results in significantly lower wages for women workers than for men. Non-tipped workers, such as cooks, are 52 percent male and they are paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Tipped workers, on the other hand, are 66 percent female and they are guaranteed only a "sub-minimum" wage of just $2.13 per hour. Tips are supposed to make up the difference but, not surprisingly, often they don't. This means that many restaurant workers, particularly women, and their families, are forced to try to survive on poverty-level wages.

[OKNancy]

1. I bet most here are good tippers

I sure try, even when things are tight for me.

[Starry Messenger]

2. Same here.

It wasn't until college that I learned that servers get taxed on a certain percentage of tips whether they actually received the tip or not (I'm not sure that's the exact system, but something like that). It's a double blow to an already pretty exploitative set-up.

[Travis_0004]

3. What you are thinking of is called "allocation of tips"

For most employers, they must report 8% of gross sales as allocated tips.

I can understand why the IRS wants this. All tips are taxable, and since they are often cash, they are often under-reported.

Also, even though your employer reports 8% of sales to the IRS, you are not forced to use that number. If you keep a log of your tips, and its accurate, you can submit your actual tips made, even if its less.

[yardwork]

4. Most waitresses aren't really in a good position to keep logs of their tips, etc.

A few wait people make a lot of money, but the vast majority make very little for the incredibly hard, backbreaking work they do.

I noticed the disparity between female and male restaurant workers back in the early 1980s, when I got a job in a restaurant right out of college. Most of the managers were male, and paid minimum wage. Most of the wait staff were women, and paid virtually nothing. We didn't make much in tips, either. The women who bused the tables were abused the most. They were supposed to be tipped by the wait staff, many of whom were stingy with the tiny pittance they earned themselves. It was women vs. women, while the male managers sat around at desk jobs. And yes, we were all taxed as if we were making much higher tips than we were actually making. If the IRS needs to pick on poor women making a couple hundred dollars a week, that's pathetic. Maybe go close some tax loopholes for corporations first.

[Gormy Cuss]

5. Ugh. I wish the sub-miminum wage for tipped workers would go away.

On the West Coast, it's gone. Tipped workers are supposed to get the standard minimum wage as the floor earnings.

[Liora24]

6. And men claim the wage gap "doesn't exist".

I always knew it was a lie because I used to be a waitress. Cooks (mostly men) get a lot of other benefits like paid vacation that waitresses don't get, either.

Also I'm going out on a limb and saying that being a waitress is exploitative because the manager (usually a man) tries to hire attractive young women as waitresses. It's basically one step away from prostitution, effectively making a woman serve men food and rely on her "good looks" for her wages.

[laconicsax]

7. This should be criminal.

I'm just glad to live in a state with a guaranteed minimum wage.

While I'm sure the pay gap exists in earnest, at least it can't be quite as dramatic as $7.25+ vs $2.13/hour.