Not on the menu
US tipped workers invoke #MeToo in fight to raise minimum wage.
NEW YORK: As a waitress, Nadine Morsch was used to having to force an occasional smile for an unpleasant customer. But when a man she was serving made a reference to grabbing her butt, she warned him not to try. And he made her pay.
For the rest of the hour he was in the diner, she said, he was “running me around as much as possible”.
Morsch said she tolerated him because she needed a good tip.
Experiences like that are one reason activists are invoking the #MeToo movement in the push for more states to adopt higher minimum wages for tipped workers.
They say a wage structure that leaves workers dependent on tips often forces them to put up with harassment from their customers or risk not being paid.
The effort has been around for years, but has taken on new momentum lately with the increased reckoning and awareness of sexual misconduct. Democratic New York Gov Andrew Cuomo has called for public hearings, there is a June ballot question in Washington, DC and an effort is underway to get the issue on the statewide ballot in Michigan.
A higher base wage, advocates say, could free tipped workers from the fear of speaking out.
“I wouldn’t have needed to feel like my entire life was in his power,” said Morsch.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, about two million people work as restaurant servers in the United States, 70% of them women.
Currently, the federal government allows workers who get tipped, such as servers and bartenders, to be paid as little as US$2.13 (RM8.30) per hour if they make at least US$7.25 (RM28.30) per hour with tips included.
No state is talking about ending the practice of tipping. But seven states – Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin – mandate that tipped workers be paid at least the same minimum wage as everyone else.
Another 26 states require employers to pay tipped workers a wage at least a little higher than the federal minimum.
Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an advocacy group, says it found that service employees in the states requiring the same minimum wage for everyone, even tipped workers, reported lower levels of harassment than states that did not.
Some wait staff said if they relied less on tips, it might change a workplace culture conducive of abuse, and not just from customers.
New York State Restaurant Association President Melissa Autilio Fleischut said a higher minimum wage for tipped workers would only saddle employers with expenses they could not afford and would not help curb sexual misconduct either.
Harassment “cuts across numerous industries and has very little to do with what a woman makes or what a sexually harassed person makes,” she said.
“I don’t see the correlation between the tip credit and sexual harassment.”