Restaurant Workers' Low Wages and Sexual Harassment Exposure

In a 2014 survey of 688 recent and former restaurant employees, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United and Forward Together found that about 80 percent said they had been harassed by co-workers or customers. Another two-thirds said they have been harassed by managers. Sixty percent of female and transgender workers said that sexual harassment was an uncomfortable aspect of their daily work lives, while about a third said that being inappropriately touched was a common occurrence.

The accommodation and food-service industry -- including bars, restaurants, and fast-food joints -- was responsible for the largest share of private-sector harassment charges filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 2005 to 2015.

In most of the country, servers and bartenders can be paid a lower wage if their tips make up the difference between their pay and the federal minimum wage. The federal floor is just $2.13 per hour for tipped workers, versus $7.25 for everyone else. In a recent report, the National Employment Law Project found that tips account for nearly 60 percent of servers' earnings and more than half for bartenders.

ROC United found that female restaurant workers who live in states were employers can pay them a lower minimum wage if they work for tips are twice as likely to experience sexual harassment as those in the seven states where all workers are paid the same wage.

Sexual harassment is a fact of life for far too many women across the economy, with about 60 percent saying they've experienced it. But the food-industry is in a category all its own. In interviews with "The Nation," many industry veterans struggled with how to describe the harassment or even where to begin, given how pervasive it was.

There is a price to pay for employers to consider by high turnover, as staffers flee an abusive environment.

Sexual Harassment in the Food Industry
From 1997-2015 there were 23,570 charges but only 364 cases.

EEOC Sexual Harassment Cases
There were 268,610 charges filed from 1997-2017 for all industries. 24,544 charges, or 9% of total charges, were made against food-industry employers.

In 2017, the EEOC had a backlog of 61,621 complaints and an  average wait time of 295 days.

The EEOC litigates only a small fraction of all charges brought to the commission. In 2000 it was 22 cases out of 15,000 filed; in 2005 it was 38 out of 12,000 filed; in 2010 it was 16 out of 11,000 filed; and in 2015 it was 5 out of 10,000 filed. (Source: "The Nation," March 5, 2018.)