Report: Black waiters tipped less for enforcing masks, distancing

Black food service workers whose incomes largely derive from tips have earned less during the coronavirus pandemic than their white counterparts and are more likely to experience retaliation for enforcing social distancing and mask rules, according to a new report by One Fair Wage, a national worker-advocacy group.

Black restaurant workers also fared worse on other measures amid a recession that has especially devastated communities of color, with Black unemployment reaching nearly 10 percent. They were more likely to contract COVID-19 or know someone who died of the disease, and were less able to obtain unemployment insurance, the report said.

The findings resulted from a survey that One Fair Wage conducted of tipped service workers who received aid from a relief fund that the organization started last March. About 4,000 out of 40,000 workers in New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., responded to the emailed survey.

Nearly 90 percent of Black workers said their tips dropped 50 percent or more after returning to work during the pandemic, compared with 72 percent of white workers, the report said. More than 70 percent of Black workers said customers tipped them less for enforcing social distancing and mask rules, compared with 60 percent of white workers.

Many restaurant workers make a base wage near the $2.13 federal minimum wage for tipped workers and rely on tips for the majority of their total earnings, said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, who is lobbying to end the subminimum wage for tipped workers.

Black food service workers saw their median earnings drop by 3.5 percent over the past 24 months — the greatest decline in wages of all racial groups — while white and Latino food service workers saw their wages increase from before the pandemic, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

from 2019 and 2020.

The practice of relying on tips to pay workers emerged after the end of slavery as a way to exploit freed Black people, the report said.