There is no
denying that raising wages will hurt businesses with already narrow profit
margins. Many owners claim that they cannot operate while paying a fair wage. They’re
telling the truth—pre–Civil War plantation owners had the exact same complaint
about the agricultural economy they built. The solution is not to
continue allowing a subminimum wage but to build a business model that does not make
the exploitation of employees central to its success.
Naturally, I’m
not claiming that food service workers are slaves. They are being paid for
their labor, just not by their employer. Restaurants offer tipped employees a
venue in which to hustle for a buck, but little else. Only 14.4 percent of
restaurant workers receive
health insurance from their employer. Other benefits are even less common. The
bulk of tipped employees’ earnings come directly from customers, in informal
and unregulated exchanges that can be extortionate and abusive. So restaurants
aren’t enslavers—they’re more like pimps.
And so it
shouldn’t be surprising that tipping culture promotes sexism, along with racism and harassment. A 2008 Cornell study showed that diners allow race, gender, and
physical attractiveness to affect the amount of their tip. Worse yet, diners of
all races consistently tip white servers more than Black
ones. In a 2014
survey, 80 percent of respondents experienced sexual harassment in their
restaurant workplace, and half had experienced sexual behaviors that were
“scary.” Female employees receiving the $2.13 wage experienced twice the sexual harassment of women in states that paid a
higher minimum wage. These same women were also three times more likely to have
an employer suggest they objectify themselves—dressing sexier, showing more
cleavage, or wearing tighter clothing—to increase income in tips. If you want
to feel even worse about the routine degradation that women in the industry are
subjected to, I recommend you search TikTok for “#pigtailtheory.”