It’s Time to End the Subminimum Wage for Tipped Workers
This week, workers filed discrimination charges against Darden Restaurants, one of the largest restaurant companies in the US. Forcing workers to rely on tips violates the Civil Rights Act, advocates say. They’re calling for a single minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped workers alike.
With a twenty-four-foot wooden statue of “Elena the Essential Worker,” activists from One Fair Wage hold a demonstration in Times Square to demand a fair wage for tipped workers during coronavirus and beyond, on August 31, 2020 in New York City. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On Tuesday, September 29, Jeffrey Jean-Louis, who works at the Capital Grille in New York City, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against his employer’s parent company, Darden Restaurants, Inc. Darden, which includes chains such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse, and the Capital Grille, is one of the largest restaurant companies in the United States, with $8.5 billion in revenue. In the complaint, Jean-Louis alleges facing racial discrimination.
“There’s a system in place where they’re trying to put a certain type of server up front, that being a white male,” says Jean-Louis. “All the white gentlemen get work, whether they can handle it or not.”
On the same day, Pamela M. Araiza, who works at the Capital Grille in Washington, DC, filed her own EEOC complaint against Darden, alleging both racial and gender discrimination. In her complaint, Araiza says that she was “consistently assigned to sections of the restaurant known to generate less in tips, which management referred to as ‘Section 8’ or ‘my low-income world.’”
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