Tipping is ingrained in American culture. Tipped workers, particularly servers and bartenders in restaurants, have a special place in American wage debates.
In most parts of the country, the workers are not required to be paid the normal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage for servers and bartenders is $2.13, which was raised the last time in 1991, by four cents. Government data shows that the median wage in the restaurant industry is only $8.89, which means that over half of people who work in restaurants earn below the federal poverty line for a family of three.
This week, the U.S. lawmakers stalled an ongoing campaign by restaurant owners to pool tips and share them with cooks and dishwashers. Tipped workers can keep their tips, a new law passed this week mandates.
Tipped workers have to negotiate their life moment to moment, as most of their income comes from tips. Numerous surveys and new reports have brought out the widely prevalent culture of sexual harassment and the inability of these workers to resist. Among the 14 million restaurant workers, three million are servers and bartenders; 70% are women, half of them younger than 25 and 40% of them mothers. One in four of them are foreign-born and nearly half of them are undocumented. All these factors make them vulnerable to abuse.
The Donald Trump administration had tried to move ahead with approving a proposal by the National Restaurants Association — critics call it ‘the other NRA’, as it shares the abbreviation with the National Rifle Association — that wants tips to be pooled and shared with cooks and dishwashers who work behind. The NRA argues that cooks and other support staff earn modest amounts, while tipped workers are in a position to make much more. The question of whether the tips can be pooled has been a legal dispute since 2011.
A divided house
Americans don’t like cooking, though they love eating. The country crossed a milestone in 2016 when they spent more money eating out than on groceries — $54.857 billion compared to $52.503 billion. The restaurant industry, however, claims to be operating on thin margins and resists wage hikes. Restaurant workers are also divided over the question of raising wages and eliminating tips.
Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, has been at the forefront of a campaign for a fair dining culture for the last 15 years. The ROC mobilised lawmakers against the Trump administration’s move. “The NRA wanted to steal workers’ tips, but the workers said no — and they won. The fact that hundreds of thousands of workers stood up and said no to employers taking their tips, and that congressional leadership listened and acted, is a testament to the power of workers standing up together,” she said this week.
Her campaign was born in New York to help restaurant workers displaced in the aftermath of 9/11. The ROC encourages employers to take the “high road” to profits by paying fair wages to all workers and promoting sustainable farming practices. It also asks consumers to be conscious of their dining destinations.
Michael Lynn, a Cornell professor who has done extensive studies on the culture, has found that tipping habits are closely conditioned by racist and sexist prejudices and stereotypes. Not only that the workers are divided over the issue, American diners overwhelmingly — 81% of them — support the practice, as they enjoy the opportunity to reward their servers. Or the power over them.
Varghese K. George works for The Hindu and is based in Washington
