Being a tipped worker in New York City is hard and since the height of the pandemic, it’s only become increasingly harder for workers to live off tips.
In a new report released Friday by the group One Fair Wage and the Food Labor Research Center, authors detail the hardships facing those in the restaurant industry, including not being able to make ends meet.
Advocates said at a rally in Lower Manhattan that the subminimum wages paid to tipped workers are leading to high rates of public assistance in the industry.
“They use food stamps at twice the rate of other workers and all because New York has persisted while other states have not,” Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, an organization spearheading higher wages for tipped workers, said.
The state’s minimum wage is set at $15, but for tipped employees, it’s lower. As a result, sometimes, food service workers aren’t always bringing in livable wages to their homes.
The report revealed how some workers have faced high rates of wage theft, which is keeping them from their hard-earned dollars.
“New York businesses cheat more than 2 million workers out of $3.2 billion of wages. A third of those that come from those earning minimum wage,” Attorney General Letitia James said.
In August, James announced that she recovered $300,000 for more than 100 salon workers as well.
“Wage theft in the state of New York has only been a mere misdemeanor on par of jumping a turnstile on par with trespassing and we have to change that and make it a felony so individuals know, businesses know that it is a felony,” she added.
Advocates note that since the pandemic sexual harassment and discrimination has also increased, especially for women of color.
“When so many women called us and said I’m regularly asked to take off your masks so I can see how cute you are and decide how much to tip you. We actually coined a term for it, we called it “mascual harassment,” Jayaraman said. “It’s so pervasive.”
Organizers also say restaurant workers are leaving in droves due to the challenges in the industry.
“1.2 million workers have left this industry and New York has lost more restaurant workers than any state in the United States of America,” Jayaraman said.
State lawmakers Senator Robert Jackson and Assembly member Jessica González-Rojas have introduced legislation in their respective chambers that would require employers to pay a full minimum wage with tips to restaurant workers.
“That New York state still allows specific industries, including restaurant workers, to pay, who are predominantly women of color and single moms, to pay a subminimum wage is unconscionable,” González-Rojas said.
They hope to get the legislation passed next session.
“We are going to put out a list of every state senator and every state assembly member that are signed onto the bill. And why would we do that? Because we want you to know who is signed on but who is not signed on. That’s what we want. We want to ask them, no, we want to bring them in. We want to bring them into the fold,” Jackson said.
Under the legislation introduced by Jackson and Gonzalez-Rojas, wages in the city for tipped workers would increase to $12.77 in 2024 and increase to $17 an hour by 2026.