Food Servers: Their Times and Troubles

By DON ROLLINS

“The average restaurant worker isn’t a teenager on a summer job, but an adult worker trying and often failing to make ends meet.” — Saru Jayaraman, Co-Director, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United

In her undercover bestseller from 2001, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” progressive author and activist Barbara Erinreich embarks on a series of minimum wage jobs, giving her readers a closeup view of America’s working poor.

First up is the real-time experience of tipped food servers, who depend on gratuities to supplement the paltry sum of $2.13 per hour (the federal minimum wage still operative in seventeen states) which, when combined with the fluctuation in number and regularity of hours, made it nearly impossible for Erinreich to cover even modest housing and food.

The job is often hard - hard on the feet, hard on the back and hard on the nerves. Bosses, cooks and co-workers prove to be a mixed lot in terms of civility. Some customers are considerate and forgiving, others are neither. Erinreich leaves for the next experience weary and frustrated, burdened by the reality of all she’d seen. 

If you’re wondering how much has changed since Ehrenreich’s foray into life on the margins, the straight answer is not nearly enough. Save for those servers in high end restaurants (coincidentally nearly always the first impacted by economic slow downs) it still takes exceptional imagination and resourcefulness to wait tables for a living.

And yet, as documented in a jointly researched article from The Fuller Project and Time (Sept. 2-9, 2019) journalists Alena Semuels and Malcolm Burnley, the food service industry has seen a 50% increase in job openings since 2000 — a sector of the workforce trending upward in terms of average age, yet compensated well below the federal government’s cost of living figures over the same period.

The research project offers insight into who’s filling all those jobs, who’s taking all those orders: they number at roughly 4.4 million; two-thirds are women; 11.1 - 18.5% live at or below the federal poverty line; at least half work more than one job; servers who are parents and/or people of color fare worst; about 1 in 4 qualifies for food assistance, subsidized housing and Medicaid.

Silver linings are few and far between when it comes to bettering the work and lives of food servers; but seven states (Alaska, California, Oregon, Minnesota, Montana and Washington) have adopted labor laws establishing a single minimum wage for both tipped and non-tipped workers. The challenge, as is often the case when measures to help low-income workers are introduced at the state level, is to either push for direct change in federal policy, or first reach critical mass among the states themselves.

Either way, it may be a stacked deck when it comes to the nation’s most vulnerable food servers. On the one hand, the GOP long ago abandoned the working poor in favor of hollow claims to falling unemployment. On the other, the Democrats increasingly function in the tyranny of the now, fending off Trumpism, while all manner of economic injustice flourishes. Hope is hard to find.

Two things we can do: 1. Explore advocacy organizations, such as Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Some are specific to wait staff, others include all restaurant workers; 2. Tip what we can, when we can, where we can. It’s an act of solidarity.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2020

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