We Dont Need No Stinking 15 - 93% disagree with effort to raise their wage 5 23 2024

Ohio hospitality workers OVERWHELMINGLY put the poo poo on the $15/hr concept. I spoke with 
President & CEO John Barker of the Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance to get the low down on this. Good talk! 

Home - Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance | Columbus, OH (eatdrinkohio.org)

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
The Power Hour with Chuck Douglas constantlybantered around as that placating anestegia. The
politicians try to give you about aliving wage, a minimum wage, that's
a living wage. But you knowwhat, they don't work the minimum wage
jobs. They don't know truly whatthe people who do those jobs are thinking,

(00:25):
feeling, and wanting. Well,guess what, at least for the
state of Ohio, they know now. Interesting statistic I ran across today from
a survey of hospitality workers. Theorganization used to be the Ohio Restaurant Association.
They've got a big, fancy newname now, the Ohio Restaurant and

(00:46):
Hospitality Alliance, and a great websiteand attractive logo and all that kind of
stuff. But I saw one oftheir surveys I think I think ten TV
might have had it on their websitewhere they said ninety three percent of the
people working in this industry that aretipped employees are saying they don't want fifteen
dollars an hour. It's detrimental totheir livelihood. But here's the thing.

(01:11):
How often have I said I amso sick of people who have no clue
making up rules for people that liveit every day. It's a constant.
You have people that are completely they'vegot no intimate knowledge of what you do,
but they decide what the licensing qualificationsare for what you do. Can't

(01:34):
stand it when I see some richperson, some rich politician, get up
on my screen and explain to methe plight of the poor. This is
what people are talking about at theirkitchen table tonight. I ain't seen a
kitchen table since you got out offifth grade. Man, stop it,
stop it. Or they bring insomebody, somebody who is so white that

(01:56):
you can almost see through them,and they want to explain to you the
plate of black America. Well,black people don't believe, Well, how
do you know? Or it's theopposite extreme. They go to the official
black represent you know, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, whoever, the person
of the day is like they speakfor all people as if your skin is
this color, you must think thisway or agree with this thing. Just

(02:20):
don't like it. And I think, honestly, this minimum wags thing,
it's a craze like started one placeand just moved around because a bunch of
do gooders think they know something thatthey don't. They they're not waiting tables,
they're not busting tables, they're notserving up the drinks, they're not
carrying the place. But you know, people deserve a living wage, so

(02:40):
they inject themselves into a situation withwhich they have no familiarity except maybe the
anecdotal evidence of their next door neighborskid who works part time at the local
restaurant as a busboy. And that'salways a problem. President of the Ohio
Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance, is JohnBarker kind enough to join me on very
short notice today to elaborate on thesenumbers and tell me the extent of the

(03:04):
surveying and everything. John, howare you good evening? I'm good,
nice too, Nice to be on. I appreciate you being being able to
do it on such short notice,sir. Ninety three percent. It sounds
like a very big number, now, is it? Indeed a big number?
Was this a large sample that youdid for the survey? Yeah,
this is a slam dug. Wegot about nine hundred and ninety people who

(03:25):
responded. And if you know howsurveys work, you know we actually had
a professor from Carnegie Mellon University overin Pittsburgh do the survey. He has
a company that does these kinds ofthings for Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh,
and he's done many of these andhe normally gets maybe three to four
hundred responses. That he got nineto ninety. You have a very motivated

(03:47):
group of people here in Ohio tovoice voice their opinion on this. And
every one of us who go towork every day, no matter what we
do, whether it's hospitality or constructionor or this stupid thing called radio,
we all go to what get apaycheck? That is the the ultimate end
of our journey is to get thatpaycheck every two weeks, every month or

(04:10):
whatever. This by by forcing thisminimum wage requirement on the industry, most
of these folks will be making lessmoney, wouldn't they. It's the ironic
thing. You know often you weresaying it earlier in your in your comments.
So you know, people bring theseideas to the table and oftentimes they're
they couldn't be further from what theactual individuals sort of want oftentimes, and

(04:33):
you know it's sad. In thiscase, it's it's this is not legislators.
This is an outside activist group that'sbringing this to Ohio, and you
know, they're not from Ohio.They're from Massachusetts. They're led by a
person from Berkeley in California. Andwhat they're trying to do is kind of
just completely disrupt the fabric of thesevarious states and cities that they're trying to

(04:57):
do this, because we're not theonly one, but they're trying to do
it here in Ohio, and we'rejust you know, we just said,
look, we're going to find outexactly what our operators, our servers,
our bartenders want and rather than havingthem make things up, which they do,
when we get the facts, sogive you go out and you survey
and you do sign you know,scientific work. And that's the results that
you talked about earlier, ninety threepercent of big number. That is very

(05:20):
unusual to have that, you know, not more than nine out of ten
agreeing on a subject, the actualincome. And I know this is hard
because I'm one of these people ifI go out now, honestly, in
this economy, I have not goneout very much before things started going downhill.
I was a pretty generous tipper,and I tried to tip in cash

(05:44):
because the less that goes on plasticand in some records the better. As
far as I'm concerned. It's atip. So I know it's hard to
figure. But with your knowledge andexperience, if you were to realistically say,
if you're in let's say casual diningsituation and Applebee's, O Charlie stuff
like that, what would you makean hour waiting tables and place like that

(06:08):
tips at all included. Yeah,So we actually have the data coming out
of the survey because that was oneof the questions to answer, and I
have two ways to answer that.One is just my general knowledge of being
in this industry for way over twentyfive years and being in the industry.
All of my kids work in restaurants. Most people do at some point,
right, so you have that firsthand knowledge of what that is. And

(06:30):
the reason we all do it isyou can make really good money and you
don't have to be all that experienceto do it if you're waiting tables.
But the survey came back, aswe asked them to answer it, in
the average for all types of restaurantsif you're a server bartender is twenty seven
and if you break that down alittle bit further, sixty four percent of
the people that responded, make betweentwenty five dollars per hour all in or

(06:55):
more than forty up to more thanmore than forty, and that more than
forty would be at your fine diningrestaurant around town, you Samer Mitchell's,
your Barcelona, your Jeff Ruby's,places like that, you know where.
It's quite an occasion, right,and your average scheck would be a little
bit higher. But even in yourmom and pops, you know, people
were making twenty five twenty six dollarsan hour because they're busy, and Americans

(07:17):
are still pretty generous, you know, when it comes to tipping at a
restaurant. They're a little bit pissedoff about tipping at you know, at
airport where you're picking up a water. That's that was what else I wanted
to ask you. John Barker,by the way, joining me on the
Legacay Retirement Group dot com phone lines. He's president of the Ohio Restaurant Hospitality
Alliance. John, how is thataffecting traditional what I refer to as traditionally

(07:40):
tipped employees waiters and waitresses and soforth, and bartender when you when you
go to you know, pick upyour your I don't know your shirts from
the laundry and they got a tipjar out. Everybody wants a tip for
everything. Now I got people thatwant me to tip them because they they
need extra tips. I don't know, is that bringing down what people who

(08:03):
are traditionally tipped are seeing now becauseit's like the consumer is feeling like,
man, I got to throw acouple of bucks in everything anymore. It's
like winning a trophy for just participating, you know. But you know,
when you ask Americans, do youreally understand the difference between something that's not
really a tipping opportunity in a restaurant? They do, right around nine out

(08:24):
of ten get it at a restaurant, and they're very comfortable because American culture,
you know, the tip in arestaurant, not not all these other
crazy places right when you get askedto. And I think people are starting
to wake up to that and nottipping it, you know again, getting
the you know, the candy barat a grocery store, not going to
tip somebody for that, right,But at restaurant, you know, not

(08:45):
out of ten people get it.And Highlands are pretty generous. Because we
look at this data really across statesand even cities and Ohiolands are pretty generous
because we're from the Midwest. We'renice people, and the average tip is
still around eighteen nineteen percent, youknow in a restaurant, which which means
you know, for server working,you know, maybe a table for an
hour, hour and a half makessome pretty good money from taking care of

(09:05):
people. My tradition general is thattwenty percent mark. If you are just
excellent, you're ridiculous, yeah,I'll jump it up to twenty five.
If you are really terrible, I'mprobably still gonna get you the twenty percent,
but you're probably going to get anote left on the table of why
I'm doing this out of sympathy andnot gratitude, because there there have been

(09:28):
times where you know, the servicehas been horrendous, and unfortunately, because
it's a youthful business in a lotof ways, we have young people coming
along that just don't they don't graspthat reaching for excellence that previous generations have
as easily or as quickly as widelyas we did. And they, you

(09:50):
know, they show up for workand they they think, you know,
I'm worth something because I know you'reyou're worth your wage because you have the
job. But to ask me tostep up, and so another twenty percent
on top of this, you know, one hundred dollars bill for a two
person quick meal or something you want, another twenty throwe on there, show
me a little something, may giveme a smile, say thank you.

(10:11):
Is there anything else I can getfor you? And please don't ask me
if I need a refill on thewater while I'm chewing the food. Now,
look at you. Think about allthe things you learn working at a
restaurant job, hospitality job, icecream store, coffee shop. You learn
all that stuff, right. Youlearn how to be polite, you learn
how to be nice to people,you learn how to have that. We

(10:31):
call it the heart for hospitality,I mean, you know, and it
teaches you I'm good at this,and I maybe want to keep doing it,
or I'm not good at this.I'm going to go be an accountant,
you know, or something else.So it's a great learning opportunity.
And I think again, most peopleare really happy when they're out to eat
and they're taking care of really well, you know, to leave a nice
chip. You know, we havethis thing today called the Internet and Yelp,

(10:54):
and you can immediately give feedback,you know, to the restaurant and
about the restaurant if they do abad job. So it's pretty quick.
Yeah, in in addition to thisnot giving a big, big amount of
tips. So that system is prettygood actually today. And I always urge
people to do that, especially ifit's a great experience and it's a locally
owned mom and pop type joint man, because they need all the help they
can get, So jump on yelpand sing their praises when something goes Well,

(11:18):
we're down to about a minute here. Let me ask you, John,
You've got the numbers. You've gota great, great survey base here,
nine hundred and ninety respondents and soforth. Does the legislature hear this?
Do the powers that be here this? Or is this still an uphill
battle to get Ohio to kind ofwipe this off, wipe this off the
agenda? Yeah, there's really twopieces to your question. First of all,

(11:39):
what we're fighting is a ballot initiativewhich would change the constitution, and
so that's moving its way through andthey have to get signatures. They have
to get enough signatures to put somethingon the ballot. That's the Higos constitution
acy can be amended. We areseparately working on a bill with a Senator
Bill Blessing Cincinnati to put a muchlower move on minimum wage, you know,

(12:01):
still moving up like it it should, but much slower and more reasonable
for businesses to be able to handle. And then continue to have the tip
credit, which is basically fifty percent. So if you're a tip worker,
you get a fifty percent of theminimum wage. You get that from your
employer, and then you make upanything else with tips. If you don't
make any tips, you're required bya lot to be paid by your company.
So everybody gets at least the minimumwage. So we're working on both

(12:24):
of those right now. We're tryingto stop the ballot initiative, and we
are supportive of what Senator Blessing hasmoved forward. It's a center build two
five six that we're working on.You are well informed, well connected,
and a good conversation list John.I appreciate your time tonight, and I
hope that you know if things develophere, have me on speed dial.
You've got a microphone here anytime youneed one. I appreciate that. Thank

(12:46):
you. Your listeners will be betterserved to hear of the fact. Thank
you very much, John, Barker. He is again the president of the
Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance. Theyare they are the people who serve you,
bring you your food and your drinkand and ninety three percent surveyed sample
size was nine hundred and ninety ninetythree percent of said we don't want the

(13:07):
fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage.We'll lose money. Good conversation there with
John Berker, and I'll tell youwhat this is the problem we have when
we let other people decide what ourvalue is. You go in and you
get as much as you can get, and if you can't get enough,
you go somewhere else. And ifyou can't get enough somewhere else, maybe

(13:28):
you're not as valuable as you thinkyou are.