It’s Time ALL Workers Get a Fair Wage
For tens of thousands of working people in New York City, tips are much more than an added bonus for a job well done. For these New Yorkers, who make their living at businesses like restaurants and nail salons, what they receive in tips is the difference between paying the rent, or not. Tips determine whether workers – many of them single mothers – can afford child care. Week after week, tips cause their income to fluctuate significantly, their very livelihood dependent on the whims of customers.
This status quo is unfair and unacceptable, but it’s codified by law. In New York State, the subminimum wage allows employers to pay workers less than minimum wage and make up the difference in tips. For food service workers at large businesses in New York City, that’s currently only $8.65 an hour. This is legislated pay inequity, and legally reinforced poverty. The people who suffer the most under this discriminating policy are women and people of color (and especially women of color), who are disproportionately represented among tipped workers.
That’s why I enthusiastically join with working people and families across New York City, and the state in calling for an end to the subminimum wage. Working people should not have to rely on the generosity of others to make ends meet.
For many vulnerable workers, the problems run even deeper than an unreliable source of income. Over the past year, many brave women and men have come forward to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse. The high-profile nature of these cases grabbed the national spotlight, but most victims of harassment do not have the megaphone of wealth and celebrity to get attention. Nearly 80 percent of female restaurant workers report getting harassed on the job, and most cannot risk offending a customer by calling out inappropriate behavior. They have bills to pay and families to feed. Notably, in the states where employers pay tipped workers the full minimum wage, women are less likely to experience sexual harassment on the job, and the industries are thriving.
Bias, sexism and racism influence how much a customer tips or if a customer tips at all. These factors contribute to the instability of a worker’s take-home pay and add up over time. The cumulative disparity in pay can contribute to keeping a working person in poverty. Ending the subminimum wage would lift many tipped workers out of poverty all together – and nearly half of those would be working people of color.
Further, tipped workers – many of them immigrants – are especially vulnerable to exploitation, from illegal wage theft to shoddy recordkeeping, as well as poor working conditions. In nail salons, for example, immigrant women work long hours, and often without the protective equipment they need, for as little as $60 a day. Enforcement around tipping practices is wildly inconsistent and challenging, leaving already-vulnerable workers without many options to ensure their safety or enough money to live on.
Workers, employers and leaders across our state led the fight for $15. Now we have an opportunity to make a fair wage a reality for all of our working people – regardless of customer behavior and bias. Enough is enough. It is time to stand up against a two-tiered wage system that keeps women of all ethnicities and people of color living in poverty and working in unsafe conditions. It is time to end the subminimum wage.
I hereby submit this statement in strong support of the proposal to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers in New York State.
