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Responding to a Restaurant Worker Critical of Campaigns to Increase the Minimum Wage
 
It is a necessity to address the abysmal pay of tipped laborers.  To talk of the unjust compensation servers and bartenders receive for their hard work and to be upset that their voice is not front and center in the minimum wage debate is valid.
 
The problem with using the above reality to speak against other service workers in the retail industry is that there are more relevant targets for outrage. The Walmart striker is not responsible for the dreadfully low restaurant worker wage. It does no good for service workers to compare workplaces, time worked, necessity of physical labor to complete job tasks, etc., against each other as a weapon  The problem is not whether or not service workers work hard.  Anyone who has worked in a low wage service job knows hard work is required to keep such a job, since service workers are easily fired.  The misdirected anger toward retail store employees demanding more compensation, however, can be the beginning of an awakening for an upset restaurant worker.  It can start the process of asking questions about why the wage should be increased for any service worker and, perhaps, reveal that there is more in common between restaurant workers and retail workers than those workers and their corporate bosses. The answers to these questions touch on the most important factor causing many Americans to feel as if there has been no economic recovery since the market crash in 2008, despite the massive increase in stock indices and rising GDP, as well as other economic indicators. (US GDP has grown almost every quarter since the crash: http://goo.gl/uO54hJ ; Chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index from 2009 to the present, approx. 10,000 pt increase in value: http://goo.gl/G2BuED)
 
All of the labor that comes from service personnel (waiters, cashiers, bartenders, cleaners, stockers, retail associates, etc.) adds massive value to the economy. Corporations only return a pittance to each worker from that massive value. (See: http://goo.gl/yijRXH)  At first glance, it may seem reasonable for corporations to exercise what appears to be a right to offer whatever wage they want to a potential worker or to hold off raising the minimum wage. The problem with this is that the cost of living rises every year, at least 2% on average for certain goods, due to inflation. Salaried workers (white collar workers or those who have better blue collar jobs) are often contracted to receive yearly salary increases to adjust for inflation. They are given more money to be able to maintain roughly the same purchasing power they had the year before. Minimum wage service workers have no guaranteed cost of living adjustments. (This article details the shrinking buying power of minimum wage workers: http://goo.gl/d7FGqj)
 
In the past, service jobs were more transitional: staffed by high schoolers, college students, and sometimes adults who perhaps did not attend college but could move up in retail, as it was not necessarily competitive.  With the economic crash, the demographics of service workers changed. More adults with dependents are suddenly relying on these jobs as their last means to find work or supplement underemployment. A larger contingent of college-educated young people are working in the service industry, since they are having trouble finding full-time paid employment in their professional fields. The needs of adult service workers go beyond that of temporary student workers, so it makes sense that there is somewhat of an awakening occurring among them that they need to do something if they are to survive in this economy.
 
For decades, corporate executives have increased their own salaries by way of monetary increases, stock options, and transportation among other unusual benefits. Executives have pushed huge expansions, buyouts, and mega-mergers that have resulted in a much less competitive global market where local economies and businesses have no power. Their expansions have meant more and more of the world’s resources rest in fewer and fewer hands. They are spending millions on getting politicians elected and even more to lobby them once elected to have laws favorable to their profit margins. (See where politicians get their funding here: http://www.opensecrets.org/) 
 
Essentially, the common worker has been stripped of every kind of power: electoral, vocational, financial, and sometimes even social.
 
A server has every right to be frustrated that they do not earn enough to live. But if that frustration is due to a perception that Walmart workers and fast food workers are possibly going to get a raise when they are not going to, the answer is not to be frustrated with other service workers. Walmart and fast food strikers are actually risking their jobs and sometimes more for a greater cause. At a Walmart strike in Maryland, a group of about 200 supporters watched as an older woman who worked for Walmart was arrested by police during a demonstration for higher wages. She was not the first to put herself on the line. (http://goo.gl/83eL7x ;http://goo.gl/l4WafS)
 
If striking workers win higher wages, it will not be because they felt entitled or that the fight was the easy way out. It will be that they were working long hours, just like restaurant workers, and sometimes they were working more than one job while trying to support families. Not everyone has the energy to be a server, but that does not mean that a restaurant worker should demean the labor of a fellow service worker in a retail store. Both are facing the same enemy: low wages and no power on the job. All service employees need to stand together until everyone is respected and adequately compensated.
 
There are local campaigns popping up around the country that are pushing for a higher wage for servers and bartenders alongside other service workers. Recently, in Washington, D.C., a group of servers and bartenders were pushing for a raise in tipped worker wages. They immediately were pushed back by servers and bartenders at higher end establishments and business owners, both small and large. Over the next few years, it is going to be critical for individual service workers to step forward and join the campaigns that are ongoing. The more people that step forward representing more and more types of service establishments, the more power service workers will have as a whole. The more powerful service workers become, the larger the change they can make in their industry when it comes to fair compensation and a right to economic stability.
 
Because the forces that keep wages down in the face of inflation are incredibly powerful, it requires drastic measures to confront it. A large number of community organizations and unions have been working together and targeting the largest companies, since they are the largest offenders.
 
If you want to learn more about minimum wage campaigns around the country and see why workers are pushing hard for it, here are some links:
 
Regarding tipped workers:
 
Know that the economic security of tipped laborers is part of the greater movement, and the same organizations fighting for Walmart workers are also trying to organize around servers, too.