#onefairwage

On Giving Tuesday, Help us support workers who are standing up for themselves!

Millions of service workers across the country are leaving the industry, saying they won't come back for anything less than a full, livable wage; we need to support them in their moment of inspiring, collective courage. We need to pass a $15 minimum wage with tips on top -- so everyone gets their own piece of the pie.

       I am so against "ONE FAIR WAGE" I am also against mandated minimum wage or mandated anything for that matter. Currently there is nothing stopping a business from paying more than the bare minimum.  Businesses could/should be paying up for staff if they value an employee and want to retain said employee. As a person that listens to and understands the difficulties in recruiting, and retaining quality employees I see that people that view staff as being expendable or "dime a dozen" have a lot more turnover than others. People work in this industry for many different reasons. 

      Some people stay for a long time and sometimes people use this as a means to an end.  Either way, most of us find joy in giving our guests a great experience.  I for one am a person that started bar-tending because I knew that the harder I worked, and the better I was at my job, I would make more money. I would never want to work Front of house knowing that I capped out financially at a set dollar amount. I love making TIPS!

     As a person that advocates and supports our industry as a whole, I don't want mandated minimums to be increased because in doing so will only lead to a snowball effect that will not benefit anyone in the long game. Believe it or not owners generally do not make much money. Usually 5-10 cents on the dollar trickle through to the owners. These folks are not going to choose to pay these new mandated minimums out of pocket so they will pass these charges onto the customers. Costs will go up! It might be a little cost here and there, but it will add up. When costs go up people can either choose to go out and pay the higher prices or go out less often or not at all. Less money will trickle through to the staff and on top of that we will have to pay for the higher menu costs as well whenever we want to go out. 

     One of the problems I have been seeing lately is what I call "tip entitlement." I hate the current theme that we "deserve" a tip and that tip should be a minimum of 20% I think we should all earn our keep and make our level of hospitality the best that we can offer. We have all been asked "what is your REAL job" or "what else do you do?" If we want to be treated as this is a true profession, then we need to act as professionals and as an employer then you should treat your staff as professionals as well. Be leaders, and lead your staff by example, and if you pay the minimum you will likely experience high turnover and get the bare minimum from your staff. As some/most of you know,

tw: sexual violence.

I stand on the other side of a glass barrier as my spinach wrap with hummus whirred through the oven on a conveyer belt, patiently waiting for it to exit the other end and an individual to layer on a mountain of dressings, vegetables, and toppings. The empty wrap clanked its way to a stop at the end of the belt, and an employee expertly lifts up the tray with the wrap with a pair of tongs.

“Any dressings?”

Sriracha and sun-dried tomato aioli, obviously.

“Toppings?”

I robotically list my classic Qualcomm order, consisting of a number of vegetables and avocado to top it off. The worker carefully rolls up my wrap with a layer of aluminum foil and paper and hands me my dinner over the glass barrier.

An interaction that for me took approximately four minutes to complete from paying in the start to receiving my food in the finish. A transactional process that as a student, particularly one from a middle-class background, I often take for granted. I exit the cafe en route to dance practice, ruminating on my personal experiences in relation to this one.

Despite never being very well-off, my parents always found some way to get food on the table. They jumped over hurdles and leaped through hoops, and with a few lucky breaks and plenty of willpower, landed here in the US in 2000 from the small sub-rural town where I was born--Maoming, China. My mother worked in a Thai restaurant for a number of years as a waitress when we first immigrated to help support our then family of three as my father was attending graduate school.

Thus growing up, I have always engrained in myself that the act of tipping was an act of respect towards those hardworking individuals in the restaurant industry who are indeed underpaid by the employer in many cases. I never thought twice about questioning the system, despite seeing mainly womxn with faces that looked like mine as well as black and brown working tirelessly to cater to the high demands of customers and general workplace, sometimes working double and triple shifts. And as we know, there are often no weekends known to the restaurant world--only work days and extra work days (known to many as holidays).

Perhaps it was an overabundance of optimism or just plain ignorance that caught me unawares when a prominent speaker in the movement for food workers rights came and spoke of the atrocities that many workers, particularly in casual and fast food, face in their workplace. Sexual violence is perpetuated by the tipping practice and cases have been reported in many cases, yet so many more go unreported (1). One could argue that it is a double edged sword and there should be a balance of individuals who choose to foot a little more on top of the bill and those who lean on the lean side of tipping to “keep workers in check”. But why should a professional waiter or waitress have to rely on the “generosity” of customers to make ends meet, rather than the employer? This power dynamic opens up the field for exploitation and abuse that is real, a burden disproportionately carried by womxn of color.

As I nibble my spinach-cabbage-cucumber-tomato-carrot-avocado wrap, I remind myself of the irony of existing in an era of technological innovation and supposedly higher standards of living when the fastest growing industry pays some of the lowest wages. The process of deskilling has prolonged the marginalization of these folx for decades since the rise of big food. It doesn’t come as a shock, considering the brief time it took me to get my food, along with the fact that hundreds of people that roll into the same cafe for the same wrap everyday, that we are increasingly desensitized to our own food system in which we move and operate in. And like interactions with our social systems, our economic system, and our political system, our many intersecting identities play into how we act and react in these spaces much more than we often notice or acknowledge. Definitely some food for thought.

Til next time,

Maggie