Hi. My name is Saru Jayaraman. As President of One Fair Wage, I’ve fought for years to end the sub-minimum $2.13 wage for tipped workers. It was a poverty wage before and it’s even worse during this pandemic.

Earlier today, as part of his Build Back Better plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars creating millions of American jobs, Joe Biden announced his support for One Fair Wage!

In his new plan announced today, Biden calls for "ending the tipped minimum wage."

This. Is. Historic. This move gives true meaning to the idea of Build Back Better by saying that as we rebuild we must re-imagine our business practices to stand up for workers and families. It represents Biden on the right side of history -- a stark contrast to Donald Trump.

This important moment was only possible after years of activism from workers across this country. Can you sign on as a public supporter of One Fair Wage in Biden’s Build Back Better plan? Click here.

Then, click here to share the news on Twitter!

Workers have organized and pushed the establishment on this issue for years, and we’re not done pushing.

The tipped minimum wage, still just $2.13 an hour at the federal level, is a legacy of post-slavery Jim Crow America. Restaurant owners didn’t want to pay newly freed Black workers, forcing them to live entirely on tips.

At the federal level and in 43 states, workers can be forced to accept a sub-minimum wage and rely on customers' tips to make up most of their wages.

The restaurant industry lobby, which later became the National Restaurant Association (NRA), pushed for federal policy to enshrine their greed, winning a carveout in the first federal minimum wage law that allowed tipped workers to be paid $0 an hour as long as tips brought the full minimum wage. This majority female workforce has thus received an increase of $2.13 over 80 years.

We also know that this policy disproportionately impacts women and specifically women of color. Seventy percent of tipped restaurant workers are women and single mothers, disproportionately women of color, who largely work in casual restaurants and diners and were living tip-to-mouth before this crisis.

Coronavirus shutdowns exacerbated the problem. Many service workers are being denied unemployment insurance because their wages were literally too low to qualify. And now they’re being forced back to work without safety protocols and paid sick days for a subminimum wage of under $5 an hour in most states.

The only path to justice is One Fair Wage -- a full minimum wage plus tips on top -- for all workers in our country. And the good news is the seven states that have already moved to One Fair Wage have seen their restaurant industries grow, worker retention and equity grow and even tipping grow.

But Republicans, and sadly many Democrats, have bowed to the massive corporate restaurant lobby and stood in the way of One Fair Wage for too long.

That’s why it’s such a big deal that workers rose up and Joe Biden acknowledged our work on this issue as he laid out broader pro-worker policies today that the PCCC calls “Elizabeth Warren-esque” in their scope.

Will you sign on as a supporter of One Fair Wage in Biden’s Build Back Better plan -- and show your solidarity with workers who will continue to rise up and speak out and push the political establishment to embrace the common sense policies that fight racism and sexism in our economy and advance basic equity and justice?

At a time when so much seems wrong, and moving in the wrong direction, this is an encouraging sign. Let’s keep fighting.

In solidarity,

-- Saru Jayaraman, Co-founder and President, One Fair Wage

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