Report Shows Waiters Are Underpaid, Overworked, And Unequally Treated

By: ELIZABETH TYLER

A new report provides definitive evidence that those from minorities working in the restaurant industry earn less than their white counterparts.

The study, by the not-for-profit organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, shows a pay gap between minority and white restaurant sector workers of on average $4 per hour. "Behind the Kitchen Door" was released on Monday, Valentine's Day, when we're more used to hearing tales of extravagant dining and extortionate wining than unfair pay and unacceptable working conditions.

As well as highlighting pay discrepancies between white workers and those from minorities, the report also drilled home the poor working conditions of waiters and waitresses across the board. For example, the average restaurant worker earns just $15,000 a year, and 80% of them aren't given paid sick days. Add to this the finding that 90% of restaurant workers in the survey don't have health insurance, and you've got a picture of an underpaid, overworked labor-force servicing the country's revelers.

As well as releasing the report ROC members around the country called on legislators to pass the WAGES Act (Working for Adequate Gains in Employment in Services) which would raise the base pay for tipped employees from $2.13 per hour to $5.50 by 2013 (the national minimum wage for nonexempt employees is $7.25 an hour). Members in Chicago even presented Representative Danny Davis with a home-made heart-shaped cake along with the report, but there was no sugar-coating of its conclusions: The nation's restaurant staff have got a pretty distasteful deal.


Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/17/remember-to-tip-report-shows-waiters-are-underpaid-overworked-and-unequally-treated/

I was the world's worst waitress. Much rather be in the kitchen.

and I'd bet the numbers who at one time or another have - we didn't need 'a study.'

They can't help it if the kitchen is slow. They work their tails off for little pay.

A daughter of mine was a waitress at a pizza place here for a couple of years. It doesn't really surprise me that minorities make less in this job. My daughter reported that minorities often left zero tip! I don't think it was because she was a WASP, but for some other socioeconomic reason. So, given that minorities often work in minority restaurants, they probably don't get many tips either.

You know what was really bad? The restaurants are so scared of the IRS that they overestimate the tips, so the waiters/waitresses get to pay taxes on money they never see. Ugh.

Please, please tip well, or at least decently.

and minorities often do not leave tips -- even to minority servers, and I know that because I heard the gripes

of the minority servers.

:silly:

of servers tipping out busboys, bartenders, prep workers etc. So that tip to your server is not always wholly his or hers. If servers don't partake in this practice, those who were denied can slow down their service to the offending server and I would say rightfully so. Next time bar and kitchen are slow you may be dealing with a server who doesn't (or can't afford to) tip out. It's dog eat dog.

Some of these fancy cash register/touch screens are coded by server & keep track server's sales and the servers are taxed 8% of their total sales figuring they got at least that much for a tip....! By the time they 'tip out' fellows employees and make up for poor or stiffed tips, there may be little left even less than 8%. Hourly pay in most restaurants is a joke.