Widespread Inequality in the Restaurant Industry Means Hardship for Women Workers [View all]

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debra-l-ness/restaurant-wages-women_b_1272961.html

There are more than 10 million restaurant workers in the United States. The majority are women. These are the hosts and hostesses who greet us, the waiters and waitresses who serve us, the bartenders who fill our drink orders, the attendants and dishwashers who clean up after us, set up our tables, and more.

Yet, despite the important role restaurant workers play in our lives and our economy, the restaurant industry provides some of the lowest-wage jobs in the nation -- leaving many workers and their families living in poverty. And as a powerful new report released this week reveals, these low wages are just one of many challenges workers in this industry face.

The report, Tipped Over the Edge: Gender Inequity in the Restaurant Industry, was produced by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC), the National Partnership for Women & Families and eleven other women's and worker organizations. It looks at widely accepted practices within the restaurant industry -- based on U.S. Census data and more than 4,300 worker surveys -- revealing harmful trends and recommending modest, common sense solutions.

As the report explains, the restaurant industry is the only industry that has a wage gap established by law, which results in significantly lower wages for women workers than for men. Non-tipped workers, such as cooks, are 52 percent male and they are paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Tipped workers, on the other hand, are 66 percent female and they are guaranteed only a "sub-minimum" wage of just $2.13 per hour. Tips are supposed to make up the difference but, not surprisingly, often they don't. This means that many restaurant workers, particularly women, and their families, are forced to try to survive on poverty-level wages.