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as having a tipped minimum wage above the federal $2.13 level. That's according to the Economic Policy Institute, which counts 34 states and D.C. A minimum wage unchanged for 30 yearsĬurrently, employers in some states can still pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour, with the understanding that customers will make up the difference so that servers earn at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and with employers on the hook if tips don't cover the gap.Įstablished in 1991, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers has been frozen at $2.13 an hour for 30 years and remains the standard pay scale in 16 states: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. after the Civil War when former slaves found unpaid work in food services or as railroad porters and relied on tips to get by. "For 150 years since emancipation, this industry has gotten away with having customers pay their workers," Jayaraman, now president of OFW, said of tipping, a practice she said took hold in the U.S. That includes pay for those for whom tips are viewed as part of their wages, like restaurant workers. It aligned with the Fight for $15, a coalition of fast-food, retail and other workers that sprang up in New York in 2012 with support from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and soon after started One Fair Wage (OFW) to end all sub-minimum wages in the U.S. ROC also was a key force in the push this past decade to make $15 an hour the new federal standard in minimum wages. Over the past 18 months, ROC has distributed more than $1 million to 5,000 restaurant workers who lost their jobs due to shutdowns during the pandemic. In the past 20 years, ROC has campaigned for paid sick days and minimum-wage increases and against management pocketing worker tips, workplace discrimination and sexual harassment, helping recoup millions of dollars for workers through legal settlements. "Restaurant workers still have limited job protections," Lee said.
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"I have to carry the burden of knowing my coworkers died that day," said Lee, who worked at Windows on the World for 15 years after immigrating to the U.S. Now 65 and a real estate agent in New York City, Albert Lee told the briefing that his life was spared because his shift as a server did not start until 5 p.m. "I always go to the World Trade Center memorial site and pray for my friends and colleagues." "Call it destiny or luck," Siby said at a press briefing Wednesday to commemorate the coming 20th anniversary of 9/11. ROC has since grown into an organization with chapters in nine states and the District of Columbia, and is currently led by Sekou Siby, a chef who would have been in the kitchen at Windows on the World on 9/11 had he not agreed to swap shifts with a colleague. "It was eerily comparable to this moment - people had died, people were scared to eat out," said Jayaraman in comparing the COVID-19 pandemic and the period after terrorists used commercial planes to attack U.S. The pair formed the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United to help find jobs for displaced New York City restaurant workers, whose numbers swelled to more than 12,000 in the months immediately following 9/11. "These workers were preparing the day's meals, preparing for customers."
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"Seventy-three workers died, mostly immigrants," she said of employees of the World Trade Center's Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of Tower One. Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the restaurant worker-rights nonprofit One Fair Wage. Less than two years out of law school at the time, Jayaraman was an attorney and organizer at a workers center on Long Island, New York, when she got a call from Fekkak Mamdough, a Moroccan immigrant who was a Windows on the World waiter and shop steward for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) union. These workers were preparing the day's meals, preparing for customers." That American story was particularly poignant at Windows on the World, which prided itself on its multinational staff, she noted: "Seventy-three workers died, mostly immigrants. "The restaurant industry is already kind of a melting pot," Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley, told CBS MoneyWatch.