The people who wash your dishes and
the folks who cook and serve your food deserve better.
When
my father immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the mid-1980s, his
first job was washing dishes at a Furr’s Fresh Buffet restaurant in New Mexico.
It paid the state-mandated minimum wage of $2.90 per hour.
My
father sent a portion of his scant earnings back to his parents and younger
siblings in Mexico. Whatever money he had left, he used to make ends meet.
Every day was a struggle.
My father shared a small studio apartment with six other friends. They slept on the floor in sleeping bags. They ate cheap food — beans, rice, and assorted canned goods. My father never ate at the restaurant where he worked. Even with the employee discount, he couldn’t afford the very food he was scrubbing from the dishes.
Furr’s
didn’t offer sick leave, so he and his coworkers often washed dishes and cooked
food while ill. They couldn’t afford to miss a day.
My
father told me the story of one of his fellow dishwashers who worked a week
straight, sick with a stubborn cold. At the end of one shift, my father found
his coworker slumped over the sink, too weak to move. My father drove him to
the emergency room, where the doctors discovered the man had pneumonia. If he’d
only stayed home for a few days and rested, the doctors told the dishwasher, he
might not have gotten so sick. This, my father and his co-worker knew, was
easier said than done.
By
the time my dad married my mom, he’d quit his job and found a new profession.
No matter how hard he worked, he knew it would be impossible to raise a family
on a dishwasher’s salary.
The
plight of restaurant workers hasn’t gotten any better over the past three
decades. According to the study, Behind the Kitchen Door: A Multi-Site Study of the
Restaurant Industry, only somewhere between 9 to 22 percent of restaurant
workers earn a living wage, and 88 percent nationwide don’t get paid sick
leave.
Moreover, seven of the ten worst-paying jobs in the United States are in the restaurant industry.
Moreover, seven of the ten worst-paying jobs in the United States are in the restaurant industry.
These
grim statistics illustrate why Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, the only national organization in the United
States dedicated exclusively to the needs of restaurant workers, is fighting to
improve wages and working conditions. At the national level, this group is
pushing for an increase in the federal minimum wage as well as a raise in the
tipped minimum wage — which has languished at $2.13 for the past 22 years.
Rep.
George Miller and Sen. Tom Harkin have introduced a bill to raise the minimum
wage to $10.10 an hour and peg the minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers
at 70 percent of that. Paid sick leave for all restaurant workers should be another cornerstone of this
legislative effort to guarantee more reasonable working conditions for the
millions of Americans in the industry.
These
are common-sense measures that benefit both the restaurant industry and its
workers. Healthier and better-paid employees are usually happier. Happier
workers are more productive.
More
importantly, making sure restaurant workers earn a living wage and have paid
sick leave is the right thing to do. No one should have to decide between
taking care of their health and getting paid. One of the most cherished ideals
in this country is the notion that if you work hard and play by the rules, you
should be able make a decent living and adequately care for your family.
The
people who wash your dishes and the folks who cook and serve your food deserve
better.
Javier Rojo is the New Mexico Fellow at the
Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. IPS-dc.org. Distributed
via OtherWords.
OtherWords.org