Tesla is sued by auto union
“What started as a little relief center has turned into a national organization,” said Jayaraman last week, as she and Fonda met with politicians in New York to discuss the “One Fair Wage” campaign.
“In 43 states, the restaurant industry gets away with not paying many of those who work in restaurants at least the minimum wage,” Jayaraman said.
Restaurant service staff who earn tips can be paid as little as $2.13 an hour, which has been the federal tipped wage since 1991, she added. In New York, the tipped minimum wage is $7.50.
While the law says an employer is required to “top off” the pay of an employee whose tips and salary don’t add up to the full minimum wage, there’s little enforcement, she added.
Jayaraman put much of the blame on the National Restaurant Association.
“The NRA tells workers that they don’t want to get higher wages, because then their tips will go away,” she said. “That’s just not true. In seven states, ROC has been able to make changes so that workers get the minimum wage and get tips, and it works better for everyone.”
The restaurant industry includes seven of the 10 lowest paying jobs in the country, according to ROC—United.
People who work in the industry are twice as likely to need food stamps than the rest of the U.S. workforce, and three times as likely to live in poverty, the organization said.
And women make up 70 percent of the 11 million industry workers, according to ROC-United.
Fonda, 79, said the industry was profiting off the vulnerability and exploitation of lowincome women.
“I’m a real believer in what ROC is doing,” said the actress. “When you feed your family off your tips, and that’s all you have, then yes, you wear that short skirt, you’ll wear that low-cut blouse, and you won’t say anything when they grope you, because you can’t,” Fonda said.
She called for a grass-roots type of outreach to spread the word on the need to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers — whose hourly pay is often reduced to zero after taxes.
“Everything good in this country has come from struggle . . . and everything good has come from organizing. You go into neighborhoods and you knock on doors and you speak to people, and more important, you listen to people,” Fonda said.
“A lot of people think it doesn’t matter who they vote for, things are never going to change. We have to prove them wrong.”
The National Restaurant Association didn’t return an email requesting comment. THE UNITED Auto Workers International Union on Thursday filed a complaint against electric carmaker Tesla Inc. on behalf of the company’s terminated workers.
The unfair labor practice charges were filed at the National Labor Relations Board’s Oakland office.
Tesla in October fired about 400 employees including associates, team leaders and supervisors, Reuters reported, citing a former employee.
Performance reviews can result in promotions and occasionally in employee departures and no action was taken based on their feelings on unionization, Tesla said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.
Roughly 20,000 complaints are filed with the NLRB by unions like the UAW as an organizing tactic, the company said.
UAW said in February it will greet Tesla’s Fremont, California, assembly plant workers with “open arms” in a bid to unionize the factory. NLRB, the U.S. agency in charge of enforcing labor law, in late August filed a complaint against Tesla, saying it found merit to workers’ complaints about unfair labor practices.