When I was 15, I landed my first job in the restaurant industry. I started in the front of the house as a busser, which required me to stay late and help out with cleaning up and closing the restaurant. Most nights, there were other people working late, but on this particular shift, the only other person there was the dishwasher. Late into the shift, he took advantage of the solitude, approached me from behind and grabbed me.
My reaction was to push him off, but not to fight back. I just wanted to get out of there and be safe. He was a strong man in his mid-thirties, who happened to be a former Mexico City police officer. My only thought was to quickly finish storing the food and leave. On my way home, I contacted management to report what had happened. They checked the surveillance video footage and verified my story. And although it was clear that I was sexually assaulted, I was the one who received the intense questioning -- not him. In the end, he was suspended without pay for a couple of days and he kept his job.
Over the years I’ve experienced many sides of the restaurant industry, working my way up from busser to host and eventually server. As a server, I was often expected to wear tighter clothes and heavier makeup, in order to increase my tips and make ends meet.
In the restaurant industry, tipped workers are frequently exposed to a working environment explicitly charged with sexual expectations. For many, making ends meet means looking the other way when customers make crude comments — or worse, physically assault you. Many workers feel pressured to ignore sexual harassment because they risk losing hours if they raise the issue with their managers. Of course, not all owners and managers tolerate this behavior in their business, but it is far too common and normal to be ignored.
Women working as tipped workers are less likely to file a sexual harassment complaint because, ultimately, their income depends on the customer. This sort of environment is discouraging for women seeking what should be their basic right to a safe workplace.
Tipped work leaves workers vulnerable to abuse, plain and simple. To change this, we need to change how our culture views and values the work of women and restaurant workers.
First, we can acknowledge that the normalization of an environment that leaves women vulnerable to abuse as just ‘part of the job’ is unacceptable. Economic security for women means that their paychecks shouldn’t depend on the amount of abuse they must suffer. The next step, is to take action by demanding one fair wage -- to protect tipped workers and to ensure that no one is exposed to this type of denigrating treatment.
Under the Federal Labor Standards Act, employers are only legally obligated to pay tipped workers $2.13/hour and up to $7.25/hour, but only if servers do not make enough to reach the minimum wage of $7.25 in tips. With women making up two-thirds of all tipped restaurant workers, this kind of financial pressure leaves many servers vulnerable to abuse.
The sooner we can eliminate tipped wage, the better. But it is also important to prepare restaurants to be able to pay their workers respectable wages. Some restaurants have already taken strides to do this while others work out options tailored to their establishment. Others have eliminated the tipping structure entirely, giving everyone a liveble base wage with the potential for profit sharing.
As a woman, an end to tipped minimum wage, and a path towards a fair living wage for all restaurant workers, is a necessity for my economic security. Eliminating the tipped minimum wage is a timely and essential step toward changing how society views the restaurant industry -- and the women working in it.
This year voters in Arizona, Maine, Colorado and Washington voted to raise the minimum wage. We have the votes to make meaningful increases at the state and local levels. Now is the time for us to turn our attention to how we can make a difference in our communities. Let’s work together to push our elected officials to raise the minimum tipped wage, our economic security depends on it.
Jessica Wynter Martin is a worker-member of the Board of Directors of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United, a participating organization in We Won’t Wait, a national, nonpartisan convening of nine national groups, representing millions of members, working to amplify the power of women of color and low-income women in 2016 and push a new economic security agenda. For more information please visit www.wewontwait2016.org.