August 15, 2023 • 47 mins
The current federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 and has not increased since 2009. Meanwhile, disabled employees can legally be paid less than their non-disabled counterparts, earning as little as 25 cents per hour. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with Daily Show researcher Stephanie O. and the President of One Fair Wage, Saru Jayaraman to discuss how the subminimum wage is legal, how tipping is a legacy of slavery, why restaurant workers aren’t running back to their jobs after the pandemic, and how the “other” NRA, the National Restaurant Association, is the biggest obstacle to raising the minimum wage.
Original air date: January 31, 2023
Head to One Fair Wage to learn more about their work, join organized protests and continue the fight for fair wages: https://onefairwage.site/
Watch the original segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAtjGY9vQRA&t
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes
deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The
Daily Show. This is what this podcast is like, all right,
this podcast is like a smoothie, you know, you know,
with the perfect blend of healthy fruit, a little bit
of protein powder, lots of lots of greens, or that
dumbass chia seed or that flax seed you bought at
(00:30):
the beginning of the year because you told yourself New Year,
knew me, I'm gonna put flax seed in everything, and
you realize it's disgusting. That's what this podcast is. I'm
Roy Wood Jr. Today we're talking about the sub minimum wage.
That's right, That's what I said, sub minimum wage even
(00:51):
less than minimum wage. Roll to clip, the.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Federal minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty five cents
an hour, but in forty three star employers are allowed
to pay tipped workers less, some as little as two
dollars and thirteen cents an hour, a federal wage which
has not increased in twenty five years. The rationale is
that customers tips are supposed to make up the difference
between two dollars and thirteen cents an hour and the
(01:15):
minimum wage, and if the tipped employee doesn't receive the
minimum wage through tips, employers are required to pay the difference.
In the industry, it's called topping up. In seven states,
including Minnesota, topping up is not an issue because those
states require employers to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage.
Tips are considered additional income SAP.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Let's talk about this a little bit more. I'm joined
by Daily Show Deep Dive researcher Stephanie Oh, who was
the original person who pitched this segment. Stephanie, thank you
for being underpaid for so long that you finally got
a spot on a show to speak out against this issue.
How you doing, I'm good.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
How are you Roy.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I'm okay, I'm okay. Also joining us for this conversation
it is the president of One Fair Wage and the
director of the Food Labor Research Center at the UC Berkeley.
Sarru Ja Raman. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
How you doing, Sorrow, I'm so good. Thank you so
much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Now, let's start from the top. As the great Chris
Rock once said in his first comedy album, Born Suspect,
Deep Cut Shit. On this podcast, Chris Rock said, that
minimum wage is your boss's way of saying, Hey, if
I could pay you less, I would, but it's against
the law. So when we talk about subminimum wage, first off,
(02:41):
let's define what sub minimum wage is, and then let's
get into who's affected the most by it.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Well, sadly, sub minimum wage is the way, Chris Rock
that your boss legally pays you less than the minimum wage,
and it is a direct legacy of slavery that has
result in six million workers in the United States legally
being paid less than the minimum wage because supposedly their
(03:09):
tips bring them from that sub minimum wage to the
regular minimum wage.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
And actually the.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Employer is supposed to ensure for every hour that they
work that tips.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Actually bring them to the full minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
But data shows that in eighty four percent of cases
at least, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
And who's the most affected by this? You know, I've waited,
I pretty much have done everything you could possibly do
in food service, from front of a house to back
of the house, and even as a tip worker at
some spots you were forced to share tips with people
in the back of the house who were getting minimum wage.
But are there any other groups that are affected by
(03:47):
this sorrow.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yes, tipped workers in the US are overwhelmingly women. They
are over seventy percent women, and they have been frankly
since Emancipation, when this whole system was created. They are
over two thirds women. They are disproportioni women of color.
We have the highest rates of single mothers of any
industry in the United States, and they are overwhelmingly single
(04:12):
moms and women who work at very casual restaurants, so
I Hoops and Denny's, Olive Garden, red Lobster. They don't
less than five percent actually work in fine dining. They
are overwhelmingly working in very casual restaurants. They struggle with
three times the poverty rate of other workers. They use
food stamps at double the rate of other workers. So
(04:34):
they are overwhelmingly young women of color. Sometimes when I
say young, I don't mean teenagers. I mean in their thirties,
they have children. The median age is actually mid thirty five,
and they are the lowest income women in America.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Actually, what about when we talk about, you know, like
I had a boss. I'll tell your brief story. I
worked at a food spot in Birmingham at sixty I
was closing the store at two in the morning, which
is against every child label law ever written. That's a
separate law that's being broken. But talk a little bit
(05:11):
about the youth workers and incarcerated workers and how they
could also be taking advantage of it, as well as
members of the disabled community.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
So first of all, let me just say there are
actually multiple sub minimum wages in the US.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
There's the sub minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
For tipped workers, which is the largest population of workers
earning less than the minimum wage, six million workers. There's
a sub minimum wage for workers with disabilities, as you said,
that's existed since the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act,
based completely just on the idea that people with disabilities
are less productive.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Not completely human.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Basically, there's a sub in and wage in many states
for youth based on the idea that somehow young people
deserve to be paid less when they work.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
There's a sum in wage for.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Incarcerated workers that is a direct a second legacy of
slavery that comes directly from, of course, the thirteenth Amendment
and the ability to continue slavery in the case of incarceration.
But returning to that first biggest chunk, which is six
million tipped workers in America. As I said, direct legacy
(06:16):
of slavery was created at emancipation in order to basically
allow the restaurant industry to hire black people for free,
black women in particular, not pay them anything, and have
them live entirely on a new thing that had just
come from Europe at the time, called tipping. And that
notion of tipping had originated in feudal Europe and it
(06:37):
was always since feudal times, an extra bonus on.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Top of a wage.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
We in the US uniquely mutated it into a replacement
for wages, creating the subage basically as a way to
continue slavery at emancipation, and that idea was made law
in nineteen thirty eight when everybody got the right to
the federal minimum wage for two for the first time,
but tipped workers were overwhelmingly Black women were left out
(07:04):
and told you get zero as long as you get tips.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So tipping comes from Europe. And then Americans go, well,
how about I just not give you anything and you
just keep whatever penny somebody throw at your ass before
the end of your shift. When did we get to
the actual minimum wage for the first time.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Actually, I do have to share one more thing before
we get to the actual minimum wage, which is at emancipation,
there were actually two industries that sought to hire newly
freed black people, not pay them anything, and have them
live on tips. One was the Pullman train company that
hired newly freed black men and as porters on trains,
tried to pay them just in tips. But as many
(07:46):
of you know, A. Philip Randahl formed the first black
union in the United States, the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters,
and won the right to an actual wage rather than
living on tips. Black women were hired by the restaurant
industry and were not so lucky. There was no union
for them, and so they were left as you told,
as you said, with just tips, no wage, and that
(08:07):
idea that black women could be paid nothing but tips
was made law in nineteen thirty eight when everybody else
got the right to a federal minimum wage for the
first time, but tipped workers, who were overwhelmingly women women
of color, were left out and told you don't get anything,
you just get tips. And we went from a zero
dollar wage in nineteen thirty eight all the way up
(08:29):
to two dollars and thirteen cents an hour, the current
federal minimum wage for tipped workers in twenty twenty three,
and I was saying, listen back to your question of
like who these workers are. Sometimes when I share this data,
people say that's terrible, but in their mind they're thinking, Oh,
that's okay, because it's just one tiny sliver of the population.
The restaurant industry is currently the number one fastest growing
(08:52):
private sector employer in the United States of America. It
is the largest employer of women. It is the largest
employer of young people, for forty percent of restaurant workers
are under the age of twenty four. It is the
largest employer formally incarcerated people. It is the largest employer
of immigrants. It's the largest employer period. One in two
Americans has worked in the industry at some point in
(09:13):
their lifetime. Just like Stephanie and Roy, you both worked
in the industry. In an industry right, half of America
has worked in this industry. And yet despite its size
and its growth and the fact that.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
We've all worked in it, it.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Has gotten away for one hundred and sixty years with
not paying its own workers and essentially saying for one
hundred and sixty years we shouldn't have to pay our
own workers other working people who eat in our restaurants
should pay our workers' wages for us and they, And
as a result, you have this immense industry of mostly women,
(09:45):
women of color, that are still paid two dollars an
hour today.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Stephanie, I want to ask you a question real quick
about the research that went into unpacking all of this,
But just real quick, Saru on that nineteen thirty eight
part of it. When you say that black women weren't
as lucky in terms of being able to get a
minimum wage, how were they seeing did they just make it?
Did they wedge out specific occupations that were predominantly done
by black women and go everybody gets a minimum wage
(10:11):
or subs or did they just go, no, you're a black,
you're a woman, no money for you. How did they
do the racism? Explain to me the specific angle of
the racism on this, right.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well, racism at the time was segregating black people into
certain occupations and industries that were still servile basically, you know,
service occupations, domestic workers, restaurant workers, porters, and those were
the occupations that were denied a minimum.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Wage, sharecropping and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
That's right, The National Restaurant Association was formed twenty years
before nineteen thirty eight and nineteen nineteen with the express
intent and purpose of fighting to deny both agricultural and
restaurant workers of wage. And at the time, both of
those occupations were overwhelmingly black, and so you know, you
can say, oh, it's about industries, but those industries were
(11:07):
overwhelmingly black, and so really it was about denying black
people a wage.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Stephanie, how did this segment come together? And you know,
because you know, in the building, I've always said that
to get a pitch approved for production on the show,
it's really not that different from getting a bill passed
in Congress without voting fifteen times in a row pit.
(11:31):
But you have the idea, you take it to someone else,
and then you two go get three more people they
corespond to the idea, and then you take it up
there to the house speaker, which is Trevor at the time, like,
how did the segment come to? And what was it
about it that drew you to it? And you know,
made the Daily Show cover it?
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Yeah, so it came about because for a while, and
it's so funny that you use that analogy because for
a while, I've been wanting to do something on just
the experience of some sort of piece on the experience
of people with disabilities. And it is exactly as you say.
And so I'm always, you know, just kind of keeping
(12:11):
my eyes open and ears open on different things related
to their plight. And I happened upon this article that
was just kind of talking about subminimal wages, subminimum wages.
Excuse me, and the dollar amount shocked me. Already minimum
wage as a former restaurant worker, I totally that's already
(12:35):
blasphemous two dollars an hour, Like are you kidding me?
But twenty five cents fifteen cents minimum wage isn't the
same for everyone. Businesses can take advantage of a section
of a federal act that allows them to pay people
with disabilities less.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
This program was established under the Roosevelt administration with arguably
good intentions. War veterans who developed physical and mental discipl
from combat came home from abroad and struggled to find employment.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
There's no limit to how low an employer can pay,
so employers could legally pay pennies per hour.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
There are even places in America where workers earn as
little as twenty two cents an hour. It's all perfectly legal.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
They're really working, They're not just sitting there. I don't
know what people think they're doing. They're actually working. It's
actual labor. And to pay somebody fifteen cents an hour
simply because they have a developmental delay, to me, is
deplorable and disgusting. And I was like, we absolutely need
(13:38):
to do this, and so I pitched it, and everybody
was shocked that that heard about it, like what this
is happening and it's legal, and yeah, that's how it
came about, just the I guess the shocking aspect of it.
Nobody really believed that this was a real thing, but
it is.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Is there anything out of all of that shock and
all that stood out above everything else or was it
just the fact that it's all of this is legal.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
I think it was multiple things. They're shocking. First of all,
the dollar amount incredibly shocking. Secondly, the fact that it's
being done to people that are always already so undervalued
within our society. It just is like it's just it's
like the cherry on top of a very poor sunday,
(14:27):
you know what I mean. Then on top of that,
the fact that it's legal to do so. And then
I think the sort of the fourth most shocking thing
is the actual labor that they're doing. Like anybody else,
If anyone on this podcast was doing that labor, we
would be paid a substantial wage. And to give somebody
(14:47):
fifteen cents an hour simply because they have a disability
is crazy to me. And it's not certain. It's not
just developmental disabilities. It could be someone who is, you know,
a crippled or has is missing a limb or something.
It's all considered disabled and they can all be paid
at that rage and so at that wage, excuse me.
(15:08):
And so that was what was probably is the most
shocking thing now as I'm saying it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And so what message does that send? Like that, what
does that say about the way society views these workers?
Like if we're okay with paying these people that, what
does that say about who we are?
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I just wrote a book about this actually called One
Fair Wage ending Some in Them Pay in America, featuring workers,
tipped workers we get a suminum wage, also workers with disabilities, youth,
incarcerated workers, gig workers, and if you look at each
of these categories of people who can legally be paid
less than the sub minimum wage. It is because of
(15:48):
their identity, not because of the work that they're doing,
or their their skill or their professionalism. Tipped workers are
overwhelmingly women, disproportionally women of color, and we're originally black
women entirely, and come on, it's two dollars after eighty
one years of a federal minimum wage law. Because they
are women and disproportion women of color. They are the
(16:09):
lowest income women in America. Incarcerated workers largely or disproportionately
black and brown, workers with disabilities simply because they have
a disability, young people simply because they're younger, gig workers
who are immigrants, and marginalized folks in our society. Each
of these categories of people who get a subminimum it is, frankly,
(16:30):
in my opinion and everything I've written about is it's
a reflection on America's valuation of some people as subhuman,
as less than less worth than others. It's America's valuation
of black people and women from the beginning right with
these two legacies of slavery. It's America's valuation of people
with disabilities. It's America's valuation of young people all legal,
(16:52):
all reflected in law. It's a reflection of our values
in law. And it is horrific because what is the
definition of the word minimum. The idea of the word
minimum is that it's the least you can earn. That
there shouldn't be anybody earning less than it. And so
(17:12):
if somebody can earn less than it, it means that
that somebody is not a somebody that are somehow less
than us. Somebody they're subhuman. They are valued at less
because of their identity. And look, in the case of
tipped workers, the fact that they're overwhelmingly women and single
moms makes them incredibly vulnerable to just horrific sexual harassment
(17:37):
and power dynamics between customers, managers, coworkers and the workers.
So we have the highest rates of sexual harassment of
any industry in the United States of America because you've
got a workforce of women that is basically told the
customer is always right, and our research shows they're actually
told by managers dress more sexy, show more cleavage, wear
(17:58):
tighter clothing.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
In order to make more money in tips.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
That's how you're going to do well in this job
is by putting yourself out there you know, pleasing the
customer because the customer is always right, and that invariably
leads to people being harassed and even assaulted in really
perfect ways.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Let's see right there. I want to take a break
right there because I want to get into that a
little bit more after the break. Because if the government
says I don't have to respect you as your employer,
then how does that lack of respect spill over into
the actual employment experience for the employee? This is beyond
the scenes. We'll be right back now. We've talked about
(18:40):
how it's legal to pay and underpay marginalized groups like
they're worthless, which I would imagine, sir rue, as you
already touched on a little bit with regards to sexual
harassment within the workplace, that it leads to the employer
to feel like I don't have to respect you, and
it also leads to the customer feeling like I don't
(19:01):
have to respect you either. What direct impact does the
sub minimum wage have on workers and how does it
perpetuate race, gender, and disability discrimination in a workforce? I
guess what are some other ways, at least.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
In the case of tipped workers who are overwhelmingly women,
disproportion women of color, single moms, They are incredibly vulnerable
to any kind of customer harassment because they know that
those customers' tips feed their children. You know, when you
get a submit and wage, and I'm sure both of
you experience this of two or three or four five
(19:34):
dollars whatever it is in your state, it is so
low you literally it literally goes to taxes. You get
a past stuff that says this is not a paycheck,
and it says zero. So you are literally completely dependent
on the goodwill, graces, mercy, and biases of customers to
feed your children. And those customers can basically do anything
(19:57):
to you however they touch you, or treat you or
talk to you. The customer is always right. And even
beyond that, our research shows that managers actually encourage women
drestmore sexy, show more cleavage, essentially sell yourself and sell
your body in order to make more money in tips.
And we know this is directly connected to the sub
minimum wage because there are seven states that actually got
(20:19):
rid of the sub minimum wage many decades ago. California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, Montana,
and Alaska all require a full minimum wage with tips
on top and have for decades. And unlike what you
might hear from the National Restaurant Association, these seven states
actually have restaurants, actually have actually larger and you know,
(20:40):
more booming restaurant industry than the forty three states with
the sub minimum wage, because guess what, when you pay
people a wage, they go spend it in restaurants, and
so the restaurant industry does better when you pay people better.
But what we also know from these seven states is
that sexual harassment is cut in half, one half the
rate of sexual harassment. Why because the women in those
(21:02):
seven states tell us, well, I get a full wage
from my.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Boss, I get tips.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Tipping is actually higher in California and Alaska than it
is anywhere in the country. But they're not completely dependent
on the customer tips to feed their families. They can
count on that wage from their boss, and so they
don't put up with as.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Much from the customers.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
They don't have to tolerate as much touching or comments
or anything from customers because they can count on that
wage from the boss. Now you said racial sexual worker
with disability, so I talked about gender. That sexual harassment is,
as I said, the highest of any industry. But it's
also true that this system creates severe racial inequities because
(21:43):
there is now irrefutable, unsurmountable evidence that actually tipping is
not correlated in the United States with the quality of service.
It is correlated with the race and gender of the server.
Now there's been so much testing. Women of color and
people of color always get tipped less, even when they
are performing what's called perfect service, even when they're right
(22:06):
alongside a white server in a fine dining restaurant, because
of what's called implicit bias among customers. And we saw
that get very ugly during the pandemic. It was always there,
not as explicit. During the pandemic, it got incredibly explicit.
We heard from women, I'm regularly asked, take off your
mask so I can see how cute you are before
(22:28):
I decide how much I want to tip you. We
heard that so frequently from so many, thousands of women,
we ended up coining a term for it. We call
it mascuell harassment. And then on race, we heard from
so many Yeah, we heard from so many people of
color that it went way beyond the typical just getting
tipped less as a person of color when they tried
(22:49):
to tell a customer, you know, wear a mask, sit
six feet apart as they were forced to do, you know,
show me your vax card. They got screamed at, they
got yelled at, they got tipped less. We had a
member who was punched in the face for trying to
enforce these rules. People were not trying to hear from
people of color what to do in the restaurants. It
(23:09):
really reached a point of such extreme that people started
leaving in mass I mean, we have done so many
thousands of surveys with workers, why are you leaving?
Speaker 4 (23:20):
What you know?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
What would make you come back? And it's this sub
minimum wage. Over and over eighty percent of workers that
we've surveyed, and we've surveyed thousands, like five thousand have
said the top reason that they're leaving the industry and
what would make them come back is the sub minimum wage.
If they got a full wage with tips on top,
they would consider coming back.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I think part of what happened during the pandemic as well,
was that a lot of us hit rock bottoms emotionally
and a lot of people fiscally. So the idea of
what do I have to lose, well, I can't lose
the job. Well, COVID took the job from you for
a while, so it gave people a lot of people
believe the strength to go no, you know what, screw
(24:02):
that because people made adjustments, figure people figure out a
way to kind of shift. Do you also think through
to a degree that the power dynamic because so many
of us as employees, just if we're just going with
the average restaurant customer, most of them are not supervisors
at their job. Most of them are not calling the
(24:23):
shots at their job. So there's a there's a there's
a foot on their neck all day and this little
meal at Applebee's is the only time you get to
be in charge. You get to call the shots, you
get to say what you want to do. And you
put on top of that a bunch of two three
years of fiscal uncertainty, the pressure of the pandemic. Nobody
(24:46):
went to therapy. So yeah, I'm going to fight you
in this waffle house right now because my toast was
too brown. I know waffle House don't want me to
say their.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Name is what it is if they told you.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
But when we talk about the disrespect towards the workers,
how much does general mental stresses that were under as
a society. In talking about the pandemic specifically, how much
do you think that has helped to exacerbate how wild
the customers are now acting with these workers.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I mean, I mean, yeah, everybody lost it. Everybody lost
it during the pandemic. People forgot how to act for sure.
But I do want to say, Roy, it wasn't just
the customers at Applebee's and at waffle We saw fine
dining customers walk into restaurants, you know, take off your
mask so I can see how cute you are. I
tell you a story of a server in Arizona at
(25:41):
a very fancy, fancy, fine dining restaurants Godsdale, Arizona, wearing
a mask because they were required to by their managers.
And the customer comes in with his wife and is
staring at her breast the entire time, and at some
point says, you know, I'm so glad you're ware a
mask because it's giving me an opportunity to look at
(26:02):
something else all evening, you know. Or another bartender we
have member of ours, Ifoma who worked at a really
fancy fine dining bar in in Washington, d C. And
the customer take off your mask so I can see
how you look. And she says, no, I'm not allowed
to her managers standing right behind her, and he says, well,
I guess we know who's not going to get tipped tonight.
I guess we know who's not going to walk home
(26:23):
with a lot of tips tonight. The power dynamic, you know,
was always there, the racial.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
EQUI is there dictate your future.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Exactly exactly I. It is a power dynamic that's always existed.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
It just got ugly.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
It got ugly with the pandemic and workers reached their limit.
You know, first of all, we didn't even talk about this.
Two thirds of tipped workers told us they couldn't even
get unemployment insurance because in most states they were told
that summonum wage was too.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Low to qualify for benefits.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
We heard from thousands of workers in that moment. Wait
a second, if the government's telling me I earned too little,
I think I earned too little. I should never have
accepted this wage.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
To begin with. And then they went back to work.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
They were told, Okay, now you're going to do two
jobs for the price of a sub minimum wage, not
even the minimum wage. Now you're going to be a
server and a public health marshal. People reach their limit.
Tips went down, harassment went up, people were screamed at,
yelled at. We have seen one point two million workers
leave this industry. Sixty percent of those who remain say
they're leaving, and eighty percent say the only thing that
(27:31):
would make them come back is a Liverpool wage.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Stephanie, during your time in the restaurant industry, I'm going
to assume harassment was a part of that, yees at
some point, Okay, how do you move around that on
a day to day to keep the job, to keep
the customer happy enough to get a to like when
the ababy gai, we you going that you a shift
because you're trying to navigate around the harassment while still
(27:56):
maintaining a positive connection with this person to get the
twenty percent tip.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
Yes, I think just in general, for women, particularly as
a woman living in New York, how you move, how
you navigate in a restaurant environment, is how you navigate
on the streets of this city, where it's a similar thing.
I think you just you have to smile and be polite,
and that's always what managers, just as Saru was saying,
(28:20):
they always try to you know tell us to act
in that manner, but I can when I think about
the people I interacted with. Luckily, honestly, I didn't experience
an extreme amount of like harassment, but I did see
a disproportionate way in which I was treated in terms
of with interacting with managers, and like male coworkers were treated,
(28:45):
it was drastically different. I remember having more tables, feeling
like I was running around like a chicken with my
neck cut off, and having coworkers just like hanging around
and not getting support for my table bulls. I remember
confronting a manager about it and about like, you know,
(29:06):
why why do I have so many tables and why
am I working so much harder than my other coworkers,
And it was kind of like dismissed. So I think
basically everything she has said is absolutely true, and it
is not an environment that is meant to help women,
and certainly not an environment men to help women of
(29:26):
color succeed.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Frankly, I'm sorry that all of that happened to you.
After the break. We need to get to the bottom
of why is this shit still happen and keeping people
from getting the money. I'm sorry for yelling. I don't
mean to raise my voice, situladies. That's not I'm not
raising my voice at y'all and raising my voice. It's
deep fake fucking politicians. It's beyond the scenes. I'm perfectly calm.
(29:52):
We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We're around the
third and headed for home. We're talking some minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Government has decided workers ain't worth the dam, which means
that the employers have decided that the workers ain't worth
the dam either, which means the customers have decided that
the workers ain't worth the damp. Stephanie Sorrow, How do
we stop this? And why is it still going on?
(30:22):
I would imagine in twenty twenty three that there's probably
been a couple of laws of referendums or suggestions in
the White House email box saying, hey, can I get
a couple of dollars please? Why has this not changed? Sorrow?
Why is this still happening?
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So first, I do want to say it's been a
long time in coming, and I want to tell you
why it's not been happening. But there's something very hopeful
we should start with. We are experiencing this historic moment.
Our members are calling it. It's not even a great resignation,
it's a great revolution where workers for the first time
(31:00):
since emancipation are standing up, walking out, demanding I'm not
going to work unless I get a full minimum wage.
And in response, we're seeing thousands of restaurants for the
first time ever having to raise wages from two to
three and four. We're tracking restaurants paying fifteen twenty twenty
five restaurants, and we're seeing some restaurants keepe Cod paying
(31:22):
fifty bucks an hour plus shit because they cannot get
staffed any other way. So we're in a very hopeful moment.
But it brings us to the question of why has
it taken so long? What has what's blocked us all
these years? And the answer is very clear, very simple.
After emancipation, restaurants, as I said, wanted the ability to
(31:43):
hire newly freed slaves, and in nineteen nineteen they actually
formed an association to keep it so forever, called the
National Restaurant Association. We call it the other NRA. It's
been around for one hundred years arguing we shouldn't have
to pay our workers because you do. Basically, they won
(32:04):
this in nineteen thirty eight. They won it in every
every time the minium wage goes up, they make sure
it stays low, and they make sure tipped workers are
always left behind. You all remember Herman Kin, Well, Herman
k exactly exactly. Herman Cain was the head of the
National Restaurant Association back in nineteen ninety six when Clinton
(32:29):
was president, and he struck a deal with Congress saying, sure,
you can go ahead and let the overall minimum wage
go up as long as tipped workers are frozen forever.
And so in nineteen ninety six, we saw the wage
for tiped workers stay. It went up the last time
in nineteen ninety one. It's been, you know, ridiculous thirty
(32:50):
two years since this wage has gone up. We have
mothers and daughters who've worked for two dollars and thirteen
cents and through their whole careers. And it's because basically
the Congress Democrats and Republicans have struck deals with the
National Restaurant Association, basically agreeing that every time the minimum
wage goes up, these workers, these women get thrown under
(33:12):
the bus. And here's the thing. So New York Times
has just reported that, you know, information that we shared
with them that actually, all these years they've spent so
much money the Restaurant Association funding you know, contributions to
elected officials candidates that then vote with them, that then
(33:36):
say okay, fine, we'll leave the tipped workers out. Turns
out all of that money, instead of coming from the
member corporations that drive the other NRA like Applebee's and
IHA and Olive Garden and Chili's, turns out that all
of that money actually comes from low wage workers who
are funding their lobbying without knowing it. So in two
(33:57):
thousand and nine, it was the last time to fettereral.
Minimum wage went up and tipped workers were left at two.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Dollars and thirteen cents an hour.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And then the Restaurant Association decided after two thousand and
nine that that was it. They never wanted to let
the minimum wage go up again, and they certainly didn't
want tipped workers to ever go up. So they basically
went to the states, the four states with the largest
restaurant industries California, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and they got bills
passed in each of those states requiring workers to take
(34:27):
food handler training and pay for it. Now, it just
so happens that the Restaurant Association owns the monopoly company
that provides food handler training called Serve Safe, and so
millions of workers each year are forced to take this training.
And guess where that money goes. It goes to the
(34:47):
restaurant Association and they turn around and use it to
lobby against those same low wage workers' interests. So low
wage workers are funding the lobbying of the other NRA
to the tune of eighty million dollars a year god,
and that lobbying is then used to get both Democrats
and Republicans to agree that fine, every time the wage
(35:09):
goes up, we leave the tipped workers out because those
poor restaurants. Everybody else can be forced to pay the
minimum wage, but those poor restaurants have to be left out.
They don't have to pay the minimum wage even though
everybody else does. So it's a nefarious history that finally, finally,
we are reaching a moment of victory because workers in
the millions are finally saying enough is enough. Regardless of
(35:33):
what you do. You you know, I won't even say
the words elected officials and restaurant associations. We're not putting
up with it anymore. So try to staff your restaurants
without it?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
How do you, Stephanie, take everything that she just said
and boil that down into like thirty seconds and a joke.
Like talk a little bit like I mean, it's silly,
but I'm serious. Like talk a little bit about when
something starts making you upset, when you start peeling back
the layers of it. Talk a little bit about the
(36:05):
creative difficulties and deciding what to keep within a piece
versus what to leave on the cutting room floor, because
there's so much that you could pack into a story,
but we only have so much time on the actual
Like on the Mothership show.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
I'm saying, yeah, I think what I try to focus on.
You know, we were talking earlier about the most shocking things,
So the things that affected me immediately from the story,
those are the things that absolutely need to go into
the story.
Speaker 6 (36:33):
And then in.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Thinking about that, I try to think about, Okay, so
what is the logic behind the villain or the perpetrator
of this wrong, what is their mindset? And then trying
to think about like the nuggets within the story that
emphasize that, because that's where the humor is. Like we're
clearly society is always punching down is already punching down
(36:57):
at these workers, so they're not the subject of the humor. Obviously,
It's going to be the people that are doing things
like what Saru just described to me. You heard me,
I was like, like the entire time because it's just
so ridiculous. So that's where the humor is. So not
only am I not going to pay you, but I'm
going to use your the very little money I already
give you to fund me to continue to not pay
(37:20):
you like that is. It's like I don't want to
just do you wrong. I want to do you just dirty.
And that's the humor.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I don't know about you too, but I'm inspired to
own a restaurant all of a sudden. It's sounds like
a good ass hustle to me.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Really.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
The thing that's always funny to me. Also when across
it's particularly in the United States, whenever there's an issue
of oh, there's not money, you know, the the big
wigs always him and a haunt. There's no money, there's
not enough money, we can't do it because we can't
afford it. There's always money. They always find the money, Okay,
So like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
To your point, all these restaurants that fought us for
so long on this issue, so many of them are
now paying this because they can't get staff to come
back any other way. So you're right, they found the money. Look,
there have always been amazing small business. We have an
association of twenty five hundred small business restaurants that are
actually leading the way on this issue, that actually agree
(38:19):
with us, we need to pay everybody a full wage
because it's better for the bottom line. Guess what workers
do when they're paid more, They actually provide us with
better service. They don't leave, they don't quit, you know,
they stay longer, they're loyal. They provide better food and
better service, and they go spend it in our economy,
they go spend it in restaurants. So there are plenty
(38:40):
of great restaurant owners that have always done this, and
now with this great revolution, thousands more restaurants are following
their lead. Because look, even Applebee's Applebee's Applebee's, which fits
this and leads this, you know, National Restaurant Association. Guess
what they're doing. They, like everybody else, have to pay more.
(39:01):
So they're starting to pay fifteen in Utah and Nebraska
and West Virginia, and we saw them paying twenty dollars
an hour in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania, and yet they're still paying
two dollars and thirteen cents in Birmingham and three dollars
in Detroit. So you tell me what's different between the
states I mentioned and Birmingham and Detroit, because and it's
(39:25):
very clear in New York Applebee's is offering fifteen to
workers in Manhattan and ten dollars to workers in Harlem
and the Bronx and the Queens. So they are having
to raise wages, but they will stick to their racism
to the very last, you know, moment, pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Help me to understand though, the difference when we're talking
about the bigger corporations that have money and shareholders and investors,
and they can move around move around money. The restaurant industry,
if we're just talking at the mom and pop level,
it's very volatile. It's still an industry where most of
the restaurants fail within the first year. I think months
was the last statistic that I heard. So what do
(40:04):
you say so rude to the counter that without the
sub minimum wage, that people with disabilities wouldn't have as
many employment opportunities because of the ABA Act. Or if
I just run my little barbecue hut and you gonna
make me pay my service ten dollars an hour, well,
now I got to raise my menu prices. And the
customers when they find out, oh, they gonna stop it.
(40:26):
I don't know why I'm talking like that, Stephanie. It's
a Mississippi barbecue hut. But this idea as a restaurant owner, Okay,
I want to pay them more, but if I do,
I have to change my whole business model. I might
have to fire two servers. Like is there any validity
(40:47):
to that counter argument to raising subminimum wage?
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Look, the validity comes from the Restaurant Association telling these
small mom and pop businesses for years, this is the
only way to do it. If you pay more, you're
going to go out of business. They terrify them, so
we feel for their fear. But the fear is not
based on reality, because the truth is we have helped
(41:11):
thousands of small business restaurants make this transition profitably. There
are ways to do it. We have actually a calculator
that helps restaurants put in their menu prices and staff size.
We show them how to make the adjustments profitably. So
many restaurants, thousands have just done it. Roy there are
restaurants right. I can give you a list of over
(41:31):
fifty restaurants in Mississippi that are currently paying a full
minimum wage with tips on top, because so many restaurants
have had to move in this direction in order to
recruit staff. So what we say back to small business
employers is we know you've been told that it's impossible
or really hard that you're going to have to lay
people off, but it's just not true. And what is
(41:51):
your option right now? No staff, You're not going to
have enough staff to fully operate unless you make the change.
Here's how you get how so many other restaurants have
done it profitably.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Okay, but if I run the mom and pop barbecue spot,
and this doesn't necessarily compare to sub minimum wage. But
it's part of the larger conversation about the restaurant industry
where we talk about the fight for fifteen and all
of the fast food work is gone. I want fifteen dollars,
and then the restaurant industry going cool, here's your fifteen dollars.
Half of you are fired, and now we're going to
(42:21):
put in self service, Kiosk touch screens and everybody else
from a touch score. Do you think what's happening in
the adjustments that have happened in the fast food industry
with the fight for fifteen is used to help fuel
the fear to control the independent restaurants that are still
dealing with the sub minimum wage with not wanting to
increase our sub minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
That's definitely the argument and the fear for sure, but
it's not actually born out to be the truth. Actually, Roy,
the states that have raised wages and ended some minimum
wages have actually higher job growth rates, So fast food
workers have not been replaced by chios overwhelmingly. There might
(43:02):
be one or two places where you might see that,
but if you look at data, the states with the
highest wages have the largest restaurant industries and the greatest
job growth rates in the restaurant industry. Why again, it's
because in those states those fast food workers are doing
guess what, They're going out and they're spending it, and
so the industry grows. More restaurants can survive if more
(43:23):
workers are able to take their families to eat. We
forget this is the largest industry in America. Means it's
the largest population of consumers who will eat out in restaurants,
and by the way, tip better, because you both know,
after having lived on the tipment and wage, you're going
to tip better. So they spend it, they eat out,
they tip better. They're better customers, frankly, and so we
(43:46):
need to value them as customers. I do want to say,
because I know we're running out of time, we are
just experienced the most wonderful historic moment of victory on
this issue. Finally talk about growth.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Let's get some good news. Was in here?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because all of these fears you're lifting up,
you know, have gone out the window as workers have
basically said enough is enough. So as a result, we won.
We won in Michigan and DC. Michigan just went from
three dollars for tipped workers to twelve dollars an hour,
and DC just went from five dollars to sixteen seventy five.
(44:23):
And we've got bills and ballot measures moving in over
a dozen states this year and next year, all because
workers have reached their limit and they're saying enough is enough.
You have to stop listening to the Restaurant Association. In fact,
you have to stop listening to the restaurant association because
they're using our money to make their arguments. It's the
part and that part.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Okay, last question, then, what can we do other than
tip better? What can the average person do to support.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Workers so much? Yeah for asking that question. The number
one thing is to right now go to our website.
There's a tool on our website one Fairwage dot org
that allows you to click to send your legislator a
message saying stop taking money from the restaurant associations taken
fraudulently from low wage workers, and support passing one fair
(45:12):
wage a full minimum wage with tips on top.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
That's number one.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
But also if you go to high Road Restaurants dot org,
you'll see a list of restaurants that are currently offering
a full minimum wage with tips on top, thousands of
them in every state. We want you to definitely support
those restaurants. More importantly, wherever you eat, show that list
on your phone to the owner manager at the end
of your meal, say hey, I don't see you on
this list. I love eating here, I love the food,
(45:38):
I love the service, but I want to see you
on this list of restaurants paying a full minimum wage
with tips on top Otherwise, I don't want to keep
supporting a restaurant that's taking my tips and using it
to pay the workers' wages. I want my tips to
be on top of a wage rather than instead of
a wage. We need you to communicate every time you
eat out, not to the server they don't have power,
(45:58):
not to the any of the workers, but to the
manager owner at the end of your meal and say
I need to see you pay a full wage because
you know I think when I tip, it should go
to the workers on top of a wage, not instead
of a wage.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Well, I wish that we had more time, because if
we did, I would have asked you a question about
all of these other random places where I know you
getting a full wage and then you just put out
a homemade tip jar up and it was a non
service based industry. I understand service based like Colestone Creamery, cool,
(46:35):
but come on, man, this is an oil change spot
I have. I'm here to buy a printer. Why is
there a tip jar next to the cash register at
the place to buy the printers?
Speaker 3 (46:46):
I'm not going to all these companies want what the
restaurant industry has. The more they apple pay makes us
tip everywhere. The more and more companies are going to say,
well they get tips, I can pay a sub minimum.
We got to get rid of the sub minimums so
it doesn't keep growing into every every freakin' industry. We'll
get tipped everywhere.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Well, thank you all, so so much. That's all the
time we have for today. Thank you to our guest
Stephanie and Sarru for going beyond the scene and also
tip on carry out orders. Listen to the Daily Show
Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or
(47:23):
wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes
deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on The
Daily Show. This is what this podcast is like, all right,
this podcast is like a smoothie, you know, you know,
with the perfect blend of healthy fruit, a little bit
of protein powder, lots of lots of greens, or that
dumbass chia seed or that flax seed you bought at
(00:30):
the beginning of the year because you told yourself New Year,
knew me, I'm gonna put flax seed in everything, and
you realize it's disgusting. That's what this podcast is. I'm
Roy Wood Jr. Today we're talking about the sub minimum wage.
That's right, That's what I said, sub minimum wage even
(00:51):
less than minimum wage. Roll to clip, the.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Federal minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty five cents
an hour, but in forty three star employers are allowed
to pay tipped workers less, some as little as two
dollars and thirteen cents an hour, a federal wage which
has not increased in twenty five years. The rationale is
that customers tips are supposed to make up the difference
between two dollars and thirteen cents an hour and the
(01:15):
minimum wage, and if the tipped employee doesn't receive the
minimum wage through tips, employers are required to pay the difference.
In the industry, it's called topping up. In seven states,
including Minnesota, topping up is not an issue because those
states require employers to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage.
Tips are considered additional income SAP.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Let's talk about this a little bit more. I'm joined
by Daily Show Deep Dive researcher Stephanie Oh, who was
the original person who pitched this segment. Stephanie, thank you
for being underpaid for so long that you finally got
a spot on a show to speak out against this issue.
How you doing, I'm good.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
How are you Roy.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I'm okay, I'm okay. Also joining us for this conversation
it is the president of One Fair Wage and the
director of the Food Labor Research Center at the UC Berkeley.
Sarru Ja Raman. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
How you doing, Sorrow, I'm so good. Thank you so
much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Now, let's start from the top. As the great Chris
Rock once said in his first comedy album, Born Suspect,
Deep Cut Shit. On this podcast, Chris Rock said, that
minimum wage is your boss's way of saying, Hey, if
I could pay you less, I would, but it's against
the law. So when we talk about subminimum wage, first off,
(02:41):
let's define what sub minimum wage is, and then let's
get into who's affected the most by it.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Well, sadly, sub minimum wage is the way, Chris Rock
that your boss legally pays you less than the minimum wage,
and it is a direct legacy of slavery that has
result in six million workers in the United States legally
being paid less than the minimum wage because supposedly their
(03:09):
tips bring them from that sub minimum wage to the
regular minimum wage.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
And actually the.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Employer is supposed to ensure for every hour that they
work that tips.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Actually bring them to the full minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
But data shows that in eighty four percent of cases
at least, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
And who's the most affected by this? You know, I've waited,
I pretty much have done everything you could possibly do
in food service, from front of a house to back
of the house, and even as a tip worker at
some spots you were forced to share tips with people
in the back of the house who were getting minimum wage.
But are there any other groups that are affected by
(03:47):
this sorrow.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yes, tipped workers in the US are overwhelmingly women. They
are over seventy percent women, and they have been frankly
since Emancipation, when this whole system was created. They are
over two thirds women. They are disproportioni women of color.
We have the highest rates of single mothers of any
industry in the United States, and they are overwhelmingly single
(04:12):
moms and women who work at very casual restaurants, so
I Hoops and Denny's, Olive Garden, red Lobster. They don't
less than five percent actually work in fine dining. They
are overwhelmingly working in very casual restaurants. They struggle with
three times the poverty rate of other workers. They use
food stamps at double the rate of other workers. So
(04:34):
they are overwhelmingly young women of color. Sometimes when I
say young, I don't mean teenagers. I mean in their thirties,
they have children. The median age is actually mid thirty five,
and they are the lowest income women in America.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Actually, what about when we talk about, you know, like
I had a boss. I'll tell your brief story. I
worked at a food spot in Birmingham at sixty I
was closing the store at two in the morning, which
is against every child label law ever written. That's a
separate law that's being broken. But talk a little bit
(05:11):
about the youth workers and incarcerated workers and how they
could also be taking advantage of it, as well as
members of the disabled community.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
So first of all, let me just say there are
actually multiple sub minimum wages in the US.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
There's the sub minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
For tipped workers, which is the largest population of workers
earning less than the minimum wage, six million workers. There's
a sub minimum wage for workers with disabilities, as you said,
that's existed since the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act,
based completely just on the idea that people with disabilities
are less productive.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Not completely human.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Basically, there's a sub in and wage in many states
for youth based on the idea that somehow young people
deserve to be paid less when they work.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
There's a sum in wage for.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Incarcerated workers that is a direct a second legacy of
slavery that comes directly from, of course, the thirteenth Amendment
and the ability to continue slavery in the case of incarceration.
But returning to that first biggest chunk, which is six
million tipped workers in America. As I said, direct legacy
(06:16):
of slavery was created at emancipation in order to basically
allow the restaurant industry to hire black people for free,
black women in particular, not pay them anything, and have
them live entirely on a new thing that had just
come from Europe at the time, called tipping. And that
notion of tipping had originated in feudal Europe and it
(06:37):
was always since feudal times, an extra bonus on.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Top of a wage.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
We in the US uniquely mutated it into a replacement
for wages, creating the subage basically as a way to
continue slavery at emancipation, and that idea was made law
in nineteen thirty eight when everybody got the right to
the federal minimum wage for two for the first time,
but tipped workers were overwhelmingly Black women were left out
(07:04):
and told you get zero as long as you get tips.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So tipping comes from Europe. And then Americans go, well,
how about I just not give you anything and you
just keep whatever penny somebody throw at your ass before
the end of your shift. When did we get to
the actual minimum wage for the first time.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Actually, I do have to share one more thing before
we get to the actual minimum wage, which is at emancipation,
there were actually two industries that sought to hire newly
freed black people, not pay them anything, and have them
live on tips. One was the Pullman train company that
hired newly freed black men and as porters on trains,
tried to pay them just in tips. But as many
(07:46):
of you know, A. Philip Randahl formed the first black
union in the United States, the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters,
and won the right to an actual wage rather than
living on tips. Black women were hired by the restaurant
industry and were not so lucky. There was no union
for them, and so they were left as you told,
as you said, with just tips, no wage, and that
(08:07):
idea that black women could be paid nothing but tips
was made law in nineteen thirty eight when everybody else
got the right to a federal minimum wage for the
first time, but tipped workers, who were overwhelmingly women women
of color, were left out and told you don't get anything,
you just get tips. And we went from a zero
dollar wage in nineteen thirty eight all the way up
(08:29):
to two dollars and thirteen cents an hour, the current
federal minimum wage for tipped workers in twenty twenty three,
and I was saying, listen back to your question of
like who these workers are. Sometimes when I share this data,
people say that's terrible, but in their mind they're thinking, Oh,
that's okay, because it's just one tiny sliver of the population.
The restaurant industry is currently the number one fastest growing
(08:52):
private sector employer in the United States of America. It
is the largest employer of women. It is the largest
employer of young people, for forty percent of restaurant workers
are under the age of twenty four. It is the
largest employer formally incarcerated people. It is the largest employer
of immigrants. It's the largest employer period. One in two
Americans has worked in the industry at some point in
(09:13):
their lifetime. Just like Stephanie and Roy, you both worked
in the industry. In an industry right, half of America
has worked in this industry. And yet despite its size
and its growth and the fact that.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
We've all worked in it, it.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Has gotten away for one hundred and sixty years with
not paying its own workers and essentially saying for one
hundred and sixty years we shouldn't have to pay our
own workers other working people who eat in our restaurants
should pay our workers' wages for us and they, And
as a result, you have this immense industry of mostly women,
(09:45):
women of color, that are still paid two dollars an
hour today.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Stephanie, I want to ask you a question real quick
about the research that went into unpacking all of this,
But just real quick, Saru on that nineteen thirty eight
part of it. When you say that black women weren't
as lucky in terms of being able to get a
minimum wage, how were they seeing did they just make it?
Did they wedge out specific occupations that were predominantly done
by black women and go everybody gets a minimum wage
(10:11):
or subs or did they just go, no, you're a black,
you're a woman, no money for you. How did they
do the racism? Explain to me the specific angle of
the racism on this, right.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well, racism at the time was segregating black people into
certain occupations and industries that were still servile basically, you know,
service occupations, domestic workers, restaurant workers, porters, and those were
the occupations that were denied a minimum.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Wage, sharecropping and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
That's right, The National Restaurant Association was formed twenty years
before nineteen thirty eight and nineteen nineteen with the express
intent and purpose of fighting to deny both agricultural and
restaurant workers of wage. And at the time, both of
those occupations were overwhelmingly black, and so you know, you
can say, oh, it's about industries, but those industries were
(11:07):
overwhelmingly black, and so really it was about denying black
people a wage.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Stephanie, how did this segment come together? And you know,
because you know, in the building, I've always said that
to get a pitch approved for production on the show,
it's really not that different from getting a bill passed
in Congress without voting fifteen times in a row pit.
(11:31):
But you have the idea, you take it to someone else,
and then you two go get three more people they
corespond to the idea, and then you take it up
there to the house speaker, which is Trevor at the time, like,
how did the segment come to? And what was it
about it that drew you to it? And you know,
made the Daily Show cover it?
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Yeah, so it came about because for a while, and
it's so funny that you use that analogy because for
a while, I've been wanting to do something on just
the experience of some sort of piece on the experience
of people with disabilities. And it is exactly as you say.
And so I'm always, you know, just kind of keeping
(12:11):
my eyes open and ears open on different things related
to their plight. And I happened upon this article that
was just kind of talking about subminimal wages, subminimum wages.
Excuse me, and the dollar amount shocked me. Already minimum
wage as a former restaurant worker, I totally that's already
(12:35):
blasphemous two dollars an hour, Like are you kidding me?
But twenty five cents fifteen cents minimum wage isn't the
same for everyone. Businesses can take advantage of a section
of a federal act that allows them to pay people
with disabilities less.
Speaker 6 (12:51):
This program was established under the Roosevelt administration with arguably
good intentions. War veterans who developed physical and mental discipl
from combat came home from abroad and struggled to find employment.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
There's no limit to how low an employer can pay,
so employers could legally pay pennies per hour.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
There are even places in America where workers earn as
little as twenty two cents an hour. It's all perfectly legal.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
They're really working, They're not just sitting there. I don't
know what people think they're doing. They're actually working. It's
actual labor. And to pay somebody fifteen cents an hour
simply because they have a developmental delay, to me, is
deplorable and disgusting. And I was like, we absolutely need
(13:38):
to do this, and so I pitched it, and everybody
was shocked that that heard about it, like what this
is happening and it's legal, and yeah, that's how it
came about, just the I guess the shocking aspect of it.
Nobody really believed that this was a real thing, but
it is.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Is there anything out of all of that shock and
all that stood out above everything else or was it
just the fact that it's all of this is legal.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
I think it was multiple things. They're shocking. First of all,
the dollar amount incredibly shocking. Secondly, the fact that it's
being done to people that are always already so undervalued
within our society. It just is like it's just it's
like the cherry on top of a very poor sunday,
(14:27):
you know what I mean. Then on top of that,
the fact that it's legal to do so. And then
I think the sort of the fourth most shocking thing
is the actual labor that they're doing. Like anybody else,
If anyone on this podcast was doing that labor, we
would be paid a substantial wage. And to give somebody
(14:47):
fifteen cents an hour simply because they have a disability
is crazy to me. And it's not certain. It's not
just developmental disabilities. It could be someone who is, you know,
a crippled or has is missing a limb or something.
It's all considered disabled and they can all be paid
at that rage and so at that wage, excuse me.
(15:08):
And so that was what was probably is the most
shocking thing now as I'm saying it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And so what message does that send? Like that, what
does that say about the way society views these workers?
Like if we're okay with paying these people that, what
does that say about who we are?
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I just wrote a book about this actually called One
Fair Wage ending Some in Them Pay in America, featuring workers,
tipped workers we get a suminum wage, also workers with disabilities, youth,
incarcerated workers, gig workers, and if you look at each
of these categories of people who can legally be paid
less than the sub minimum wage. It is because of
(15:48):
their identity, not because of the work that they're doing,
or their their skill or their professionalism. Tipped workers are
overwhelmingly women, disproportionally women of color, and we're originally black
women entirely, and come on, it's two dollars after eighty
one years of a federal minimum wage law. Because they
are women and disproportion women of color. They are the
(16:09):
lowest income women in America. Incarcerated workers largely or disproportionately
black and brown, workers with disabilities simply because they have
a disability, young people simply because they're younger, gig workers
who are immigrants, and marginalized folks in our society. Each
of these categories of people who get a subminimum it is, frankly,
(16:30):
in my opinion and everything I've written about is it's
a reflection on America's valuation of some people as subhuman,
as less than less worth than others. It's America's valuation
of black people and women from the beginning right with
these two legacies of slavery. It's America's valuation of people
with disabilities. It's America's valuation of young people all legal,
(16:52):
all reflected in law. It's a reflection of our values
in law. And it is horrific because what is the
definition of the word minimum. The idea of the word
minimum is that it's the least you can earn. That
there shouldn't be anybody earning less than it. And so
(17:12):
if somebody can earn less than it, it means that
that somebody is not a somebody that are somehow less
than us. Somebody they're subhuman. They are valued at less
because of their identity. And look, in the case of
tipped workers, the fact that they're overwhelmingly women and single
moms makes them incredibly vulnerable to just horrific sexual harassment
(17:37):
and power dynamics between customers, managers, coworkers and the workers.
So we have the highest rates of sexual harassment of
any industry in the United States of America because you've
got a workforce of women that is basically told the
customer is always right, and our research shows they're actually
told by managers dress more sexy, show more cleavage, wear
(17:58):
tighter clothing.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
In order to make more money in tips.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
That's how you're going to do well in this job
is by putting yourself out there you know, pleasing the
customer because the customer is always right, and that invariably
leads to people being harassed and even assaulted in really
perfect ways.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Let's see right there. I want to take a break
right there because I want to get into that a
little bit more after the break. Because if the government
says I don't have to respect you as your employer,
then how does that lack of respect spill over into
the actual employment experience for the employee? This is beyond
the scenes. We'll be right back now. We've talked about
(18:40):
how it's legal to pay and underpay marginalized groups like
they're worthless, which I would imagine, sir rue, as you
already touched on a little bit with regards to sexual
harassment within the workplace, that it leads to the employer
to feel like I don't have to respect you, and
it also leads to the customer feeling like I don't
(19:01):
have to respect you either. What direct impact does the
sub minimum wage have on workers and how does it
perpetuate race, gender, and disability discrimination in a workforce? I
guess what are some other ways, at least.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
In the case of tipped workers who are overwhelmingly women,
disproportion women of color, single moms, They are incredibly vulnerable
to any kind of customer harassment because they know that
those customers' tips feed their children. You know, when you
get a submit and wage, and I'm sure both of
you experience this of two or three or four five
(19:34):
dollars whatever it is in your state, it is so
low you literally it literally goes to taxes. You get
a past stuff that says this is not a paycheck,
and it says zero. So you are literally completely dependent
on the goodwill, graces, mercy, and biases of customers to
feed your children. And those customers can basically do anything
(19:57):
to you however they touch you, or treat you or
talk to you. The customer is always right. And even
beyond that, our research shows that managers actually encourage women
drestmore sexy, show more cleavage, essentially sell yourself and sell
your body in order to make more money in tips.
And we know this is directly connected to the sub
minimum wage because there are seven states that actually got
(20:19):
rid of the sub minimum wage many decades ago. California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, Montana,
and Alaska all require a full minimum wage with tips
on top and have for decades. And unlike what you
might hear from the National Restaurant Association, these seven states
actually have restaurants, actually have actually larger and you know,
(20:40):
more booming restaurant industry than the forty three states with
the sub minimum wage, because guess what, when you pay
people a wage, they go spend it in restaurants, and
so the restaurant industry does better when you pay people better.
But what we also know from these seven states is
that sexual harassment is cut in half, one half the
rate of sexual harassment. Why because the women in those
(21:02):
seven states tell us, well, I get a full wage
from my.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Boss, I get tips.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Tipping is actually higher in California and Alaska than it
is anywhere in the country. But they're not completely dependent
on the customer tips to feed their families. They can
count on that wage from their boss, and so they
don't put up with as.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Much from the customers.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
They don't have to tolerate as much touching or comments
or anything from customers because they can count on that
wage from the boss. Now you said racial sexual worker
with disability, so I talked about gender. That sexual harassment is,
as I said, the highest of any industry. But it's
also true that this system creates severe racial inequities because
(21:43):
there is now irrefutable, unsurmountable evidence that actually tipping is
not correlated in the United States with the quality of service.
It is correlated with the race and gender of the server.
Now there's been so much testing. Women of color and
people of color always get tipped less, even when they
are performing what's called perfect service, even when they're right
(22:06):
alongside a white server in a fine dining restaurant, because
of what's called implicit bias among customers. And we saw
that get very ugly during the pandemic. It was always there,
not as explicit. During the pandemic, it got incredibly explicit.
We heard from women, I'm regularly asked, take off your
mask so I can see how cute you are before
(22:28):
I decide how much I want to tip you. We
heard that so frequently from so many, thousands of women,
we ended up coining a term for it. We call
it mascuell harassment. And then on race, we heard from
so many Yeah, we heard from so many people of
color that it went way beyond the typical just getting
tipped less as a person of color when they tried
(22:49):
to tell a customer, you know, wear a mask, sit
six feet apart as they were forced to do, you know,
show me your vax card. They got screamed at, they
got yelled at, they got tipped less. We had a
member who was punched in the face for trying to
enforce these rules. People were not trying to hear from
people of color what to do in the restaurants. It
(23:09):
really reached a point of such extreme that people started
leaving in mass I mean, we have done so many
thousands of surveys with workers, why are you leaving?
Speaker 4 (23:20):
What you know?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
What would make you come back? And it's this sub
minimum wage. Over and over eighty percent of workers that
we've surveyed, and we've surveyed thousands, like five thousand have
said the top reason that they're leaving the industry and
what would make them come back is the sub minimum wage.
If they got a full wage with tips on top,
they would consider coming back.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I think part of what happened during the pandemic as well,
was that a lot of us hit rock bottoms emotionally
and a lot of people fiscally. So the idea of
what do I have to lose, well, I can't lose
the job. Well, COVID took the job from you for
a while, so it gave people a lot of people
believe the strength to go no, you know what, screw
(24:02):
that because people made adjustments, figure people figure out a
way to kind of shift. Do you also think through
to a degree that the power dynamic because so many
of us as employees, just if we're just going with
the average restaurant customer, most of them are not supervisors
at their job. Most of them are not calling the
(24:23):
shots at their job. So there's a there's a there's
a foot on their neck all day and this little
meal at Applebee's is the only time you get to
be in charge. You get to call the shots, you
get to say what you want to do. And you
put on top of that a bunch of two three
years of fiscal uncertainty, the pressure of the pandemic. Nobody
(24:46):
went to therapy. So yeah, I'm going to fight you
in this waffle house right now because my toast was
too brown. I know waffle House don't want me to
say their.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Name is what it is if they told you.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
But when we talk about the disrespect towards the workers,
how much does general mental stresses that were under as
a society. In talking about the pandemic specifically, how much
do you think that has helped to exacerbate how wild
the customers are now acting with these workers.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I mean, I mean, yeah, everybody lost it. Everybody lost
it during the pandemic. People forgot how to act for sure.
But I do want to say, Roy, it wasn't just
the customers at Applebee's and at waffle We saw fine
dining customers walk into restaurants, you know, take off your
mask so I can see how cute you are. I
tell you a story of a server in Arizona at
(25:41):
a very fancy, fancy, fine dining restaurants Godsdale, Arizona, wearing
a mask because they were required to by their managers.
And the customer comes in with his wife and is
staring at her breast the entire time, and at some
point says, you know, I'm so glad you're ware a
mask because it's giving me an opportunity to look at
(26:02):
something else all evening, you know. Or another bartender we
have member of ours, Ifoma who worked at a really
fancy fine dining bar in in Washington, d C. And
the customer take off your mask so I can see
how you look. And she says, no, I'm not allowed
to her managers standing right behind her, and he says, well,
I guess we know who's not going to get tipped tonight.
I guess we know who's not going to walk home
(26:23):
with a lot of tips tonight. The power dynamic, you know,
was always there, the racial.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
EQUI is there dictate your future.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Exactly exactly I. It is a power dynamic that's always existed.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
It just got ugly.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
It got ugly with the pandemic and workers reached their limit.
You know, first of all, we didn't even talk about this.
Two thirds of tipped workers told us they couldn't even
get unemployment insurance because in most states they were told
that summonum wage was too.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Low to qualify for benefits.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
We heard from thousands of workers in that moment. Wait
a second, if the government's telling me I earned too little,
I think I earned too little. I should never have
accepted this wage.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
To begin with. And then they went back to work.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
They were told, Okay, now you're going to do two
jobs for the price of a sub minimum wage, not
even the minimum wage. Now you're going to be a
server and a public health marshal. People reach their limit.
Tips went down, harassment went up, people were screamed at,
yelled at. We have seen one point two million workers
leave this industry. Sixty percent of those who remain say
they're leaving, and eighty percent say the only thing that
(27:31):
would make them come back is a Liverpool wage.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Stephanie, during your time in the restaurant industry, I'm going
to assume harassment was a part of that, yees at
some point, Okay, how do you move around that on
a day to day to keep the job, to keep
the customer happy enough to get a to like when
the ababy gai, we you going that you a shift
because you're trying to navigate around the harassment while still
(27:56):
maintaining a positive connection with this person to get the
twenty percent tip.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
Yes, I think just in general, for women, particularly as
a woman living in New York, how you move, how
you navigate in a restaurant environment, is how you navigate
on the streets of this city, where it's a similar thing.
I think you just you have to smile and be polite,
and that's always what managers, just as Saru was saying,
(28:20):
they always try to you know tell us to act
in that manner, but I can when I think about
the people I interacted with. Luckily, honestly, I didn't experience
an extreme amount of like harassment, but I did see
a disproportionate way in which I was treated in terms
of with interacting with managers, and like male coworkers were treated,
(28:45):
it was drastically different. I remember having more tables, feeling
like I was running around like a chicken with my
neck cut off, and having coworkers just like hanging around
and not getting support for my table bulls. I remember
confronting a manager about it and about like, you know,
(29:06):
why why do I have so many tables and why
am I working so much harder than my other coworkers,
And it was kind of like dismissed. So I think
basically everything she has said is absolutely true, and it
is not an environment that is meant to help women,
and certainly not an environment men to help women of
(29:26):
color succeed.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Frankly, I'm sorry that all of that happened to you.
After the break. We need to get to the bottom
of why is this shit still happen and keeping people
from getting the money. I'm sorry for yelling. I don't
mean to raise my voice, situladies. That's not I'm not
raising my voice at y'all and raising my voice. It's
deep fake fucking politicians. It's beyond the scenes. I'm perfectly calm.
(29:52):
We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We're around the
third and headed for home. We're talking some minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Government has decided workers ain't worth the dam, which means
that the employers have decided that the workers ain't worth
the dam either, which means the customers have decided that
the workers ain't worth the damp. Stephanie Sorrow, How do
we stop this? And why is it still going on?
(30:22):
I would imagine in twenty twenty three that there's probably
been a couple of laws of referendums or suggestions in
the White House email box saying, hey, can I get
a couple of dollars please? Why has this not changed? Sorrow?
Why is this still happening?
Speaker 3 (30:38):
So first, I do want to say it's been a
long time in coming, and I want to tell you
why it's not been happening. But there's something very hopeful
we should start with. We are experiencing this historic moment.
Our members are calling it. It's not even a great resignation,
it's a great revolution where workers for the first time
(31:00):
since emancipation are standing up, walking out, demanding I'm not
going to work unless I get a full minimum wage.
And in response, we're seeing thousands of restaurants for the
first time ever having to raise wages from two to
three and four. We're tracking restaurants paying fifteen twenty twenty
five restaurants, and we're seeing some restaurants keepe Cod paying
(31:22):
fifty bucks an hour plus shit because they cannot get
staffed any other way. So we're in a very hopeful moment.
But it brings us to the question of why has
it taken so long? What has what's blocked us all
these years? And the answer is very clear, very simple.
After emancipation, restaurants, as I said, wanted the ability to
(31:43):
hire newly freed slaves, and in nineteen nineteen they actually
formed an association to keep it so forever, called the
National Restaurant Association. We call it the other NRA. It's
been around for one hundred years arguing we shouldn't have
to pay our workers because you do. Basically, they won
(32:04):
this in nineteen thirty eight. They won it in every
every time the minium wage goes up, they make sure
it stays low, and they make sure tipped workers are
always left behind. You all remember Herman Kin, Well, Herman
k exactly exactly. Herman Cain was the head of the
National Restaurant Association back in nineteen ninety six when Clinton
(32:29):
was president, and he struck a deal with Congress saying, sure,
you can go ahead and let the overall minimum wage
go up as long as tipped workers are frozen forever.
And so in nineteen ninety six, we saw the wage
for tiped workers stay. It went up the last time
in nineteen ninety one. It's been, you know, ridiculous thirty
(32:50):
two years since this wage has gone up. We have
mothers and daughters who've worked for two dollars and thirteen
cents and through their whole careers. And it's because basically
the Congress Democrats and Republicans have struck deals with the
National Restaurant Association, basically agreeing that every time the minimum
wage goes up, these workers, these women get thrown under
(33:12):
the bus. And here's the thing. So New York Times
has just reported that, you know, information that we shared
with them that actually, all these years they've spent so
much money the Restaurant Association funding you know, contributions to
elected officials candidates that then vote with them, that then
(33:36):
say okay, fine, we'll leave the tipped workers out. Turns
out all of that money, instead of coming from the
member corporations that drive the other NRA like Applebee's and
IHA and Olive Garden and Chili's, turns out that all
of that money actually comes from low wage workers who
are funding their lobbying without knowing it. So in two
(33:57):
thousand and nine, it was the last time to fettereral.
Minimum wage went up and tipped workers were left at two.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Dollars and thirteen cents an hour.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And then the Restaurant Association decided after two thousand and
nine that that was it. They never wanted to let
the minimum wage go up again, and they certainly didn't
want tipped workers to ever go up. So they basically
went to the states, the four states with the largest
restaurant industries California, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and they got bills
passed in each of those states requiring workers to take
(34:27):
food handler training and pay for it. Now, it just
so happens that the Restaurant Association owns the monopoly company
that provides food handler training called Serve Safe, and so
millions of workers each year are forced to take this training.
And guess where that money goes. It goes to the
(34:47):
restaurant Association and they turn around and use it to
lobby against those same low wage workers' interests. So low
wage workers are funding the lobbying of the other NRA
to the tune of eighty million dollars a year god,
and that lobbying is then used to get both Democrats
and Republicans to agree that fine, every time the wage
(35:09):
goes up, we leave the tipped workers out because those
poor restaurants. Everybody else can be forced to pay the
minimum wage, but those poor restaurants have to be left out.
They don't have to pay the minimum wage even though
everybody else does. So it's a nefarious history that finally, finally,
we are reaching a moment of victory because workers in
the millions are finally saying enough is enough. Regardless of
(35:33):
what you do. You you know, I won't even say
the words elected officials and restaurant associations. We're not putting
up with it anymore. So try to staff your restaurants
without it?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
How do you, Stephanie, take everything that she just said
and boil that down into like thirty seconds and a joke.
Like talk a little bit like I mean, it's silly,
but I'm serious. Like talk a little bit about when
something starts making you upset, when you start peeling back
the layers of it. Talk a little bit about the
(36:05):
creative difficulties and deciding what to keep within a piece
versus what to leave on the cutting room floor, because
there's so much that you could pack into a story,
but we only have so much time on the actual
Like on the Mothership show.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
I'm saying, yeah, I think what I try to focus on.
You know, we were talking earlier about the most shocking things,
So the things that affected me immediately from the story,
those are the things that absolutely need to go into
the story.
Speaker 6 (36:33):
And then in.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Thinking about that, I try to think about, Okay, so
what is the logic behind the villain or the perpetrator
of this wrong, what is their mindset? And then trying
to think about like the nuggets within the story that
emphasize that, because that's where the humor is. Like we're
clearly society is always punching down is already punching down
(36:57):
at these workers, so they're not the subject of the humor. Obviously,
It's going to be the people that are doing things
like what Saru just described to me. You heard me,
I was like, like the entire time because it's just
so ridiculous. So that's where the humor is. So not
only am I not going to pay you, but I'm
going to use your the very little money I already
give you to fund me to continue to not pay
(37:20):
you like that is. It's like I don't want to
just do you wrong. I want to do you just dirty.
And that's the humor.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I don't know about you too, but I'm inspired to
own a restaurant all of a sudden. It's sounds like
a good ass hustle to me.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Really.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
The thing that's always funny to me. Also when across
it's particularly in the United States, whenever there's an issue
of oh, there's not money, you know, the the big
wigs always him and a haunt. There's no money, there's
not enough money, we can't do it because we can't
afford it. There's always money. They always find the money, Okay,
So like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
To your point, all these restaurants that fought us for
so long on this issue, so many of them are
now paying this because they can't get staff to come
back any other way. So you're right, they found the money. Look,
there have always been amazing small business. We have an
association of twenty five hundred small business restaurants that are
actually leading the way on this issue, that actually agree
(38:19):
with us, we need to pay everybody a full wage
because it's better for the bottom line. Guess what workers
do when they're paid more, They actually provide us with
better service. They don't leave, they don't quit, you know,
they stay longer, they're loyal. They provide better food and
better service, and they go spend it in our economy,
they go spend it in restaurants. So there are plenty
(38:40):
of great restaurant owners that have always done this, and
now with this great revolution, thousands more restaurants are following
their lead. Because look, even Applebee's Applebee's Applebee's, which fits
this and leads this, you know, National Restaurant Association. Guess
what they're doing. They, like everybody else, have to pay more.
(39:01):
So they're starting to pay fifteen in Utah and Nebraska
and West Virginia, and we saw them paying twenty dollars
an hour in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania, and yet they're still paying
two dollars and thirteen cents in Birmingham and three dollars
in Detroit. So you tell me what's different between the
states I mentioned and Birmingham and Detroit, because and it's
(39:25):
very clear in New York Applebee's is offering fifteen to
workers in Manhattan and ten dollars to workers in Harlem
and the Bronx and the Queens. So they are having
to raise wages, but they will stick to their racism
to the very last, you know, moment, pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Help me to understand though, the difference when we're talking
about the bigger corporations that have money and shareholders and investors,
and they can move around move around money. The restaurant industry,
if we're just talking at the mom and pop level,
it's very volatile. It's still an industry where most of
the restaurants fail within the first year. I think months
was the last statistic that I heard. So what do
(40:04):
you say so rude to the counter that without the
sub minimum wage, that people with disabilities wouldn't have as
many employment opportunities because of the ABA Act. Or if
I just run my little barbecue hut and you gonna
make me pay my service ten dollars an hour, well,
now I got to raise my menu prices. And the
customers when they find out, oh, they gonna stop it.
(40:26):
I don't know why I'm talking like that, Stephanie. It's
a Mississippi barbecue hut. But this idea as a restaurant owner, Okay,
I want to pay them more, but if I do,
I have to change my whole business model. I might
have to fire two servers. Like is there any validity
(40:47):
to that counter argument to raising subminimum wage?
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Look, the validity comes from the Restaurant Association telling these
small mom and pop businesses for years, this is the
only way to do it. If you pay more, you're
going to go out of business. They terrify them, so
we feel for their fear. But the fear is not
based on reality, because the truth is we have helped
(41:11):
thousands of small business restaurants make this transition profitably. There
are ways to do it. We have actually a calculator
that helps restaurants put in their menu prices and staff size.
We show them how to make the adjustments profitably. So
many restaurants, thousands have just done it. Roy there are
restaurants right. I can give you a list of over
(41:31):
fifty restaurants in Mississippi that are currently paying a full
minimum wage with tips on top, because so many restaurants
have had to move in this direction in order to
recruit staff. So what we say back to small business
employers is we know you've been told that it's impossible
or really hard that you're going to have to lay
people off, but it's just not true. And what is
(41:51):
your option right now? No staff, You're not going to
have enough staff to fully operate unless you make the change.
Here's how you get how so many other restaurants have
done it profitably.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Okay, but if I run the mom and pop barbecue spot,
and this doesn't necessarily compare to sub minimum wage. But
it's part of the larger conversation about the restaurant industry
where we talk about the fight for fifteen and all
of the fast food work is gone. I want fifteen dollars,
and then the restaurant industry going cool, here's your fifteen dollars.
Half of you are fired, and now we're going to
(42:21):
put in self service, Kiosk touch screens and everybody else
from a touch score. Do you think what's happening in
the adjustments that have happened in the fast food industry
with the fight for fifteen is used to help fuel
the fear to control the independent restaurants that are still
dealing with the sub minimum wage with not wanting to
increase our sub minimum wage.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
That's definitely the argument and the fear for sure, but
it's not actually born out to be the truth. Actually, Roy,
the states that have raised wages and ended some minimum
wages have actually higher job growth rates, So fast food
workers have not been replaced by chios overwhelmingly. There might
(43:02):
be one or two places where you might see that,
but if you look at data, the states with the
highest wages have the largest restaurant industries and the greatest
job growth rates in the restaurant industry. Why again, it's
because in those states those fast food workers are doing
guess what, They're going out and they're spending it, and
so the industry grows. More restaurants can survive if more
(43:23):
workers are able to take their families to eat. We
forget this is the largest industry in America. Means it's
the largest population of consumers who will eat out in restaurants,
and by the way, tip better, because you both know,
after having lived on the tipment and wage, you're going
to tip better. So they spend it, they eat out,
they tip better. They're better customers, frankly, and so we
(43:46):
need to value them as customers. I do want to say,
because I know we're running out of time, we are
just experienced the most wonderful historic moment of victory on
this issue. Finally talk about growth.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Let's get some good news. Was in here?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because all of these fears you're lifting up,
you know, have gone out the window as workers have
basically said enough is enough. So as a result, we won.
We won in Michigan and DC. Michigan just went from
three dollars for tipped workers to twelve dollars an hour,
and DC just went from five dollars to sixteen seventy five.
(44:23):
And we've got bills and ballot measures moving in over
a dozen states this year and next year, all because
workers have reached their limit and they're saying enough is enough.
You have to stop listening to the Restaurant Association. In fact,
you have to stop listening to the restaurant association because
they're using our money to make their arguments. It's the
part and that part.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Okay, last question, then, what can we do other than
tip better? What can the average person do to support.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Workers so much? Yeah for asking that question. The number
one thing is to right now go to our website.
There's a tool on our website one Fairwage dot org
that allows you to click to send your legislator a
message saying stop taking money from the restaurant associations taken
fraudulently from low wage workers, and support passing one fair
(45:12):
wage a full minimum wage with tips on top.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
That's number one.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
But also if you go to high Road Restaurants dot org,
you'll see a list of restaurants that are currently offering
a full minimum wage with tips on top, thousands of
them in every state. We want you to definitely support
those restaurants. More importantly, wherever you eat, show that list
on your phone to the owner manager at the end
of your meal, say hey, I don't see you on
this list. I love eating here, I love the food,
(45:38):
I love the service, but I want to see you
on this list of restaurants paying a full minimum wage
with tips on top Otherwise, I don't want to keep
supporting a restaurant that's taking my tips and using it
to pay the workers' wages. I want my tips to
be on top of a wage rather than instead of
a wage. We need you to communicate every time you
eat out, not to the server they don't have power,
(45:58):
not to the any of the workers, but to the
manager owner at the end of your meal and say
I need to see you pay a full wage because
you know I think when I tip, it should go
to the workers on top of a wage, not instead
of a wage.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Well, I wish that we had more time, because if
we did, I would have asked you a question about
all of these other random places where I know you
getting a full wage and then you just put out
a homemade tip jar up and it was a non
service based industry. I understand service based like Colestone Creamery, cool,
(46:35):
but come on, man, this is an oil change spot
I have. I'm here to buy a printer. Why is
there a tip jar next to the cash register at
the place to buy the printers?
Speaker 3 (46:46):
I'm not going to all these companies want what the
restaurant industry has. The more they apple pay makes us
tip everywhere. The more and more companies are going to say,
well they get tips, I can pay a sub minimum.
We got to get rid of the sub minimums so
it doesn't keep growing into every every freakin' industry. We'll
get tipped everywhere.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Well, thank you all, so so much. That's all the
time we have for today. Thank you to our guest
Stephanie and Sarru for going beyond the scene and also
tip on carry out orders. Listen to the Daily Show
Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or
(47:23):
wherever you get your podcasts.
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