By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
The report says 90 percent of female restaurant workers have experienced some form of sexual harassment while on the job. Commissioned by The Advocacy Group, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United or ROC, the data shows tipped workers are twice as likely to be harassed as non-tipped, and that, “workers in states where the sub minimum wage for workers is just $2.13 actually experienced sexual harassment at a higher rate than workers in states where there’s no difference between regular minimum wage and the minimum wage for tipped workers,” explained Ariel Jacobson of ROC United.
In fact, the report says workers in the states with the $2.13 minimum wage were three times more likely to be told by managers to wear more suggestive clothing and faced higher rates of harassment. According to ROC United, only seven states require the same wage for jobs that get tips and those that don’t.
The question is what’s the correlation between earning the minimum wage and the amount of harassment a worker receives? Those that published the report say flat out — it creates a power struggle when your earnings depend on how much a customer likes you.
“There’s a dynamic set up when workers are dependent on customers to pay their incomes in tips because their earning wage from their employer is so low that their income is coming from the customers’ tips themselves,” Jacobson said.
So they’re calling for industry wide changes — raising the minimum wage, which the report says would help get to the root of the problem.
“They have that economic insecurity that makes it such that they need to do whatever is necessary to get more tips,” said Jacobson.
National and state restaurant associations, however, are questioning the validity of the report. The groups overseeing the data are also behind large labor movements within the industry. Some wonder if the harassment issue is being exploited for other purposes.
“Nobody walks out just making $2.13 an hour and they at least make more than the minimum wage. And in New Jersey, usually, far above that. Our average tipped employee in the state is between $15 to $16. That’s why I’m very suspect of the agenda and the actual statistics,” said New Jersey Restaurant Association President Marilou Halvorsen.
For young workers like Spadaro, the results seem consistent with her experiences.
“There’s not really much they’ll say. Often they’ll just keep it shoved under the rug because they don’t want to either quit or find another job or even get fired sometimes if someone’s unhappy,” she said.
But the jury is still out on whether raising the wage would actually change the problem, or just change the incentive to report it.