Protesters for better wages for fast-food workers gather outside McDonald's near Westlake Park last August. (photo: Marcus Yam/Seattle Times)
03 September 14
hree
years ago, I waited tables at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi. The
minimum-wage job was one of four part-time jobs I held at the time, all
of which were necessary to pay my rent, keep my lights on, have heat in
the dead of winter, and keep my car in decent shape. Tips at the
restaurant were placed in a bucket by the cash register, and the bucket
was divvied up among all the servers and cooks at the end of the day.
But before the tips were distributed, the co-owners of the restaurant
would retreat to their back office for “bookkeeping,” and the bucket of
tips would suddenly be much lighter. After a full day of waiting tables,
I would only go home with a little over $30 in tips. If one of the
owners caught a server pocketing a tip from a customer who wanted to tip
a server directly, we would be forced to put it in the bucket, which we
knew would be skimmed. But my experience is just one example of the
situation for millions of restaurant workers in America today.
All of America’s burglars, convenience store robbers,
carjackers, muggers, and bank robbers combined don’t steal even half as
much money as America’s top restaurant chains steal from their workers
in a given year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S.
Department of Labor had to recover $280 million
in wages held by employers in 2012. That same year, the Department of
Justice said the total amount of money stolen in robberies was $139 million.
But since criminal restaurant chain executives aren’t being carted off
to jail for their acts of robbery, restaurant workers will shut down
their businesses by any means necessary this Thursday – including committing acts of civil disobedience.
The New York Times has reported on the rise of wage theft,
in which low-wage workers across all sectors are forced to work long
hours, for 6 or 7 days a week, while having their federally-mandated
time-and-a-half overtime pay withheld by their employer. A California
judge recently ruled that FedEx violated wage theft laws by denying
overtime pay to drivers that FedEx classified as “independent
contractors.” FedEx, a global, multi-billion dollar company that often
pays an effective tax rate in the single digits,
is appealing the ruling. And 41 supermarket janitors in Fremont,
California had over $330,000 in back pay withheld by their employers,
who made employees sign off on blank time sheets in an effort to pay
them for fewer hours than they actually worked.
40 percent of restaurant workers live in poverty, despite the restaurant industry’s growing revenues by 30 percent
over the past 20 years. The federal minimum wage for servers has been
locked at a little over $2 an hour since the 1990s, thanks to an
agreement that Congress entered into with the National Restaurant
Association lobby when it was headed by Herman Cain.
The pizza magnate had fiercely opposed any increase in the federal
minimum wage, but agreed to not lobby against further increases if
Congress kept the minimum wage for tipped workers at a paltry $2.13 an
hour. This means that even well-tipped servers are barely making ends
meet on their current salaries.
The key demand of the nationwide strikes on Thursday
will be $15 an hour. Seattle has already passed a $15 an hour minimum
wage ordinance, after a year of workers shutting down restaurants
and Socialist city council member Kshama Sawant’s proposal to Seattle’s
governing body. Last year, striking workers in Chicago pointed out that
if the federal minimum wage had kept up with worker productivity, the
minimum wage would be $22 an hour. Senator Elizabeth Warren has also endorsed
that same figure. Workers are reasoning that $15 an hour and the right
to organize a union is a reasonable proposal for billion-dollar
restaurant chains to meet workers halfway.
Robert Reich’s documentary “Inequality for All” compared several charts
showing that workers’ wages and productivity climbed at even rates
until the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began busting the air traffic
controllers’ union. As unions continued their decline from the Reagan
years to the present day, worker productivity and corporate profits
continued their steady uptick while workers’ wages stagnated. Today,
it’s no coincidence that the U.S. has the world’s 4th highest rate of income inequality,
while many states have curbed union organizing rights altogether or
severely crippled their ability to organize new workers. And while U.S.
inequality as a whole is terribly high, with CEOs making 280 times what
their average worker makes, it’s even worse in the restaurant industry –
the average restaurant CEO makes 721 times what his average employee makes.
Thursday’s strikes will be made up of not only fast food workers, but home care workers as well. The Supreme Court recently ruled
that home healthcare providers are effectively “right-to-work”
employees, greatly weakening their unions by not requiring that workers
pay dues for their union to collectively bargain on their behalf. Low
wage workers in the fast food and retail industries argue that a union
is necessary to protect them from predatory employers who don’t pay
overtime, skim workers’ tips, and threaten retaliation against workers
who speak out against low wages and poor working conditions.
And contrary to what wealthy CEOs want you to believe,
a higher minimum wage is actually beneficial to economies. In San Jose,
California, the minimum wage went up from $8.00 to $10.15. UC Berkeley
economist Michael Reich found that the unemployment rate has dropped from 7.4 percent to 5.4 percent
since March of 2013, and the number of new restaurants in San Jose is
up 20 percent in the last year and a half. While restaurant owners have
had to increase prices by roughly 1 percent as a result of the wage
hike, most of their customers don’t even notice. By contrast, the
restaurant in Mississippi where I worked for a paltry minimum wage and
routinely had my tips stolen by the owners has since gone out of
business.
President Obama has even called for an increase in the
minimum wage and equal pay for women in the workplace. If restaurant
workers show up every day to put food on our tables, we should support
their fight to be able to put food on their own tables.
Carl Gibson, 27, is co-founder of US Uncut, a
nonviolent grassroots movement that mobilized thousands to protest
corporate tax dodging and budget cuts in the months leading up to Occupy
Wall Street. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the
documentary We're Not Broke, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film
Festival. Carl is also the author of How to Oust a Congressman, an
instructional manual on getting rid of corrupt members of Congress and
state legislatures based on his experience in the 2012 elections in New
Hampshire. He lives in Sacramento, California.
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