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FEBRUARY 3, 2022
Meyerson on TAP
How to Stop Restaurant Workers From Quitting
Dumping the subminimum-wage standard ($2.13 an hour?!) they labor under
would certainly help-and now may be more politically possible.
Anyone who's looked into our nation's record-high quit rate has
found, not surprisingly, that the rate is highest among restaurant
workers. If any explanation is needed, two new studies make clear why.
Yesterday's
**New York Times** reported on a study
conducted by MIT economist David Autor and associates that found that
the government's Paycheck Protection Program and other pandemic relief
programs had some cracks through which numerous workers tumbled. A
second report, from the UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center and the
group One Fair Wage, examined one particularly glaring crack: In the 43
states where tipped workers receive subminimum wages well below the
standard for other workers (the federal subminimum is a whopping $2.13
an hour), many were ineligible for the emergency benefits because they
couldn't document wage earnings high enough to qualify for the
expanded unemployment insurance. (That's a helluva catch, that
catch-22.)
Virtually every restaurant in the land received badly needed PPP funds,
but given the low wages that waitstaff workers made, even those able to
access all the funds made available by the emergency legislation
collected at most $26,300 spread over the 18 months that PPP was in
operation.
No wonder that at least one million such workers have quit their
jobs-with more still to come (or more precisely, go). "We surveyed
3,000 restaurant workers across the country," Saru Jayaraman, director
of One Fair Wage, told the
**Prospect**, "and 54 percent of them say they're going to leave."
The glaring shortage of restaurant workers has compelled management at
many such establishments to raise their wages, and may even compel
states to raise the subminimum standard for tipped workers or, better
still, eliminate the subminimum category entirely. It is already
changing the political climate in which campaigns to raise the wage take
place.
In Washington, D.C., for instance, voters approved a ballot measure in
2018 that would have eliminated the subminimum standard and enabled
tipped employees to earn the city's regular minimum wage, which is
approaching $15. Under pressure from the local restaurant industry,
however, the city council overrode the voters' verdict (the ballot
measure had only been "advisory") and kept the wage at the local
subminimum of $3.89.
With restaurants now beseeching workers to return to waiting tables,
they've concluded they can no longer lobby for the subminimum
standard. When One Fair Wage recently began collecting signatures to put
a new measure to strike down the subminimum on the ballot in the next
D.C. election, Jayaraman said, "the head of the D.C. restaurant
association called me to say they wouldn't fight it this time around.
When we presented the measure to the Board of Elections, they didn't
even show up to register their opposition. No restaurant can oppose this
measure at the same time they're desperately seeking staff."
This political opening, Jayaraman hopes, isn't confined to D.C. One
Fair Wage and its allies are planning to put a minimum-wage hike
measure, which would include the elimination of the subminimum, on the
Michigan ballot in November-a measure, she added, that might boost
Democratic prospects in this swing state if, and only if, Democrats
campaign so hard for it that its popularity rubs off on them. (Even in
the reddest of states, voters have almost unfailingly passed
minimum-wage increases, though this hasn't invariably boosted
Democratic prospects.)
At the federal level, the downturn in business caused by the omicron
strain has prompted the industry to ask Congress to provide another
round of financial aid to restaurants. If there's going to be one more
tranche of restaurant assistance, Jayaraman said, it should be
conditioned on actually helping stanch the flight of the workers from
the industry-80 percent of whom, in the Berkeley/One Fair Wage survey,
said they'd stay only if they received significantly higher wages. The
best way to do that would be to link any new federal assistance to the
elimination of the munificent federal minimum of $2.13. Restaurant
worker activists and advocates will descend on Capitol Hill next Tuesday
to make that patently sensible case.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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We Were Warned About the Ports
A 2015 federal report predicted the entire slowdown that's come to
pass. BY ALEXANDER SAMMON
Labor Fight Brews on the Docks
Negotiations loom between the dockworkers union and shipping companies
making record profits. BY ELLA FANGER
Jon Ossoff's Moment of Trust
Before entering the Senate, Ossoff had more than half his net worth in
Apple stock; it's now in a blind trust. Today, he must vote on
legislation affecting the company. BY JAROD FACUNDO
The Fight to Save the Manchin Nursing Home
The Manchin empire extends to a nondescript nursing home in deep coal
country. It's a relic of a social welfare system that has collapsed.
BY LEE HARRIS
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