HOURS.
The salient characteristic of restaurant work is the length of the working day. Fifty-eight per cent. of the women employees work each week beyond the fifty-four-hour limit set by law for women in stores and factories. A twelve-hour day and a seven-day week is the lot of one-fifth of these workers. (See Diagram 5.) A fifteen-hour day is not uncommon. Not quite one-half of the waitresses work over 54 hours a week or 9 hours a day. The reason for this is that a large number of them, 31 per cent., are “one-meal girls.”Seventy-eight per cent.of all other restaurant workers, however, exceed the fifty-four hour week.
Comparing the hours of labor of these women with the hours of labor of all employees, both male and female, in the factories of New York State, four per cent. of the factory employees and thirty-five per cent. of the women restaurant employees work over sixty hours a week. Two per cent. of the factory employees and twenty per cent. of the women in restaurants work seventy-two hours or over.[4]
Diagram 6.—Comparison of Weekly Hours of Labor for Women in Restaurants and all Factory Employees in New York State.
Diagram 6.—Comparison of Weekly Hours of Labor for Women in Restaurants and all Factory Employees in New York State.
Shorter hours have been brought about in factories by the voluntary action of manufacturers, who recognize the inefficiency of over-worked men and women; by concerted action of the workers, who have united to fight for their own protection; and by legal enactment, proving that the people of New York State are alive to the dangers of overwork. Some restaurant managers realize the waste and harm of too long hours and arrange theiremployees’ time accordingly; most of them do not. Women restaurant workers in New York State have never been successfully organized; they cannot protect themselves. They have no legal redress for overwork; the law has neglected them. In the course of this investigation, a girl of twenty was found working one hundred and twenty-two hours a week—longer than the law allows factory employees to work in two weeks. Yet this is within the law. Although restaurants differ from stores and factories in keeping open more hours a day, and sometimes for the whole twenty-four, a system of shifts would do away with the scandalously long hours to which thousands of girls and women are bound.
Diagram 5.—Weekly Hours of Labor of Women Employed in Restaurants.
Diagram 5.—Weekly Hours of Labor of Women Employed in Restaurants.
That restaurant work is at best a great drain upon the physical strength and nervous force of the worker is evident. Standing, walking, lifting and carrying heavy weights is unavoidable. The report on restaurants made by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says: “There was much complaint among the waitresses that the work was very hard and they could stand it but a few years. A number of the girls interviewed had worked as three meal girls until their health was broken; then they took positions as one meal girls and barely made a living. Carrying the heavy trays and the constant standing and walking cause ill health. Usually a man is employed to carry away the empty dishes, but the waitresses must bring the trays loaded with food.”[5]
Besides the cost to endurance, nerves are at constant tension for hurry is the remorseless rule. A waitress must not only remember a multitude of orders and fill them quickly, but she must keep her temper under the exactions of the most trying customer. The cook must keep her head amid the confusion and noise of a hot, crowded kitchen. The kitchen girl must be everywhere at once with a helping hand and the dish-washer’s very job depends upon her quickness. One of this latter group said that she washes seven thousand articles in an hour and a half. A waitress, when asked the effect of the work upon her, answered, “Sore feet and a devilish mean disposition.” A man restaurant worker speaking of kitchen girls remarked, “It’s no work for a woman. They have to lift heavy pots full of vegetables and fillin all the gaps. A man has some endurance, but a woman can’t stand it more than nine hours a day.”
Many kinds of work are difficult and taxing in their performance, but if the working day is not prolonged beyond a certain point, and there is a sufficient period of rest, such work is not necessarily injurious to the health of the worker. If this point is passed, health is impaired.
The day of a restaurant worker does not begin with her arrival at the restaurant nor end when she leaves. Half of these women live at a distance, taking thirty minutes or more to reach their place of employment. When this extra hour spent in going to and from work is added to a twelve hour day, it is a factor to be reckoned with. It means cutting off an already insufficient night’s rest, and, when a girl cannot afford carfare, a weary walk home after being on her feet all day. Nor is this all. Only a few of the best-paid waitresses can afford to pay for the laundering of their aprons and uniforms. Consequently this must be done by the girl herself, adding another burden to a load already too heavy.
The law requires that girls in factories and stores have at least one-half hour off for luncheon. This does not apply to restaurant workers. The “one-meal” girls eat before and after serving, but the majority of the “two-meal” and full-time girls have no time at all for meals. They must eat when they can snatch a moment from their work. There were many complaints of indigestion and loss of appetite from the workers as a result of haste and irregularity in taking their meals. One girl remarked, “You’re glad to grab ’em any way you can round here,” and another said, “It’s a wonder more girls aren’t dead, the way they eat all of a rush. Often the smell of food all the time takes away my appetite so I can’t eat any way.”
A regular time off for meals would be of great benefit to the worker not only in allowing her to eat quietly and comfortably, but in giving her a little rest. In some restaurants after the noon rush is over the girls can sit down and do “side-work,” folding napkins, polishing silver, filling salt-cellars, etc. The greater number of girls, however, have no so-called “idle time.” They must be on their job continuously. In other restaurants the girls work on a “split trick,” that is, they have one or two hours off in the afternoon. This is a very unpopular arrangement. Not only does it keep them out late in the evening, but they cannot use their free time to good advantage. There is little opportunity for recreation or social intercourse during these hours because they come in the morning or afternoon when the girls’ friends areall at work. Nor is there ordinarily time for fresh air and exercise, especially in the case of the kitchen workers. A waitress usually has only to take off her apron to be ready for the street, but the other women have not time to change to street clothes and back again in their free period. They stay in the hot kitchen because no other place is provided.
Up at six, away at 6:30, home at 8 o’clock at night worn out by the wear and tear of twelve hours’ toil, a dress and an apron to be washed and ironed for tomorrow—after a day like this, what spirit or strength is left to a girl for play and the friendly relations that safeguard her from moral danger? It is a significant fact that with few exceptions the restaurant worker is not known to settlements and girls’ clubs. She does not share the group interests and social life open to other working girls. Neither does she make friends with her fellow-workers—the spring and vitality needed to win and establish friendships has been lost under the deadening effect of overwork.
According to Miss Mary Van Kleeck’s estimate in her study of “Working Girls in Evening Schools,” less than one per cent. of those attending were restaurant workers. They simply have not the physical strength for outside activities and interests. Time after time in answer to the question “What do you do in the evening?” came the reply, “Oh, I go right to bed.” One girl, who left the work because of broken health, said, “If I went out in the evening I’d be sick the next day, and the boss would say I couldn’t expect to do good work if I stayed out late at night.”
The report on restaurants of the Chicago Juvenile Protective Association, emphasizes a truth too much ignored when it says: “The entire investigation revealed once more the hideous risks of the excessively fatigued and overworked girl, who is able to obtain the rest and comfort she craves only through illicit channels.”[6]
Restaurant Kitchen Opening on Row of Toilets.Loaned by the Tenement House Department of the City of New York.
Restaurant Kitchen Opening on Row of Toilets.
Loaned by the Tenement House Department of the City of New York.
Although the number of women employed in restaurants at night is not great, night work in this occupation is a factor to be seriously considered. The restaurants which employ women at night are the small establishments in the tenement districts of the city where hours are longest and surroundings most trying; the cheaper restaurants in the theatre districts where the employment of women is an added attraction to after-the-theatre supper parties; and restaurants in railway stations which are necessarily open all night.
The law makes it illegal to employ women in factories and mercantile establishments between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. The reasons which caused the state to exercise its police power to safeguard the health and morals of these classes of workers apply equally to the employment of women in restaurants. The very fact that only four per cent. of the workers interviewed were employed at night proves that night work for women in restaurants is not a necessary evil. That it is an evil is beyond question.
The dangers of night work are two-fold. First, it is a distinct menace to the health of the worker. The Factory Investigating Commission in its Report to the Legislature for 1913, states: “The chief danger to health from night work is ... due to the inevitable lack of sleep and sunlight. Recuperation from fatigue takes place fully only in sleep, and best in sleep at night. Hence night work is, in a word, against nature. This injury to health is all the greater because sleep lost at night by working women is never fully made up by day. For, in the first place, sleep in the day time is not equal in recuperative power to sleep at night.... Moreover, quiet and privacy for sleep by day is almost impossible to secure. Upon returning home in the middle of the night or at dawn the workers can snatch at most only a few hours’ rest.”
Often a woman will have one week of night work alternating with a week of work in the day time. She hardly gets accustomed to sleeping by day when she is taken off the night shift, to change back again at the end of the week. Thus it is impossible for her to form regular habits in sleeping and eating.
Secondly, there is a grave moral danger involved innight work, especially for restaurant workers since at this time they are open to the attentions of an undesirable class of men. “I don’t like to work at night,” one young waitress said. “The men are always fresher to girls at night than in the day time. Perhaps it’s because so many of those gamblers come in drunk.” Nor is it safe for a woman to go home alone after twelve o’clock at night. Instances of hideous occurrences are familiar to everyone. A little widow, the mother of seven children, told the investigator that she had given up her work as a dishwasher for this very reason. A friend of hers working in a nearby restaurant, was set upon, robbed and killed on her way home from work late one night. “I changed my work then,” said the woman, “for what would the children do if anything happened to me?”
The majority of restaurants employ men for night duty. It is evident, therefore, that the employment of women is not essential to the convenience and comfort of either restaurant owners or customers.
In nearly every branch of industry the working week is six days long. It is universally conceded that there must be one day in the seven for rest and relaxation if men and women are to give their best service. With restaurant workers, thirty-three per cent. of whom have no day of rest in seven, the need for such a time is particularly great because of the long working day. Otherwise they have no opportunity for a thorough rest and the poisons of fatigue are not thrown off. If these poisons are not eliminated, they accumulate in the system and finally result in physical breakdown.
And not only is this free day important on the score of health, but it is also the time for recreation and the strengthening of family ties. For the girl who has no leisure, no time for real relaxation and play, there is only a starved and empty existence. A woman who has no opportunity to be with and to know her children, who must leave them to the care of friends or a day nursery or the street, who has no day in the week to be at home with them, can hardly be a potent factor in shaping their lives. She suffers and so do the children, and the stability of such a family life is at best uncertain. One woman said, “If I get a half day off on Sunday to be with my children, it makes me happy all the week.”
Diagram 7.—Ages of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.Diagram 8.—Nationality of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.
Diagram 7.—Ages of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.
Diagram 8.—Nationality of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.
Who are the workers that bear the brunt of the long hours in restaurants? They are for the most part the younger women and girls—those who are most likely to be injured by overstrain. They are the very ones whom it is to society’s interest to protect most carefully since by their strength is measured the strength of the next generation. Less than thirty per cent. of all workers exceeding fifty-four hours a week are over thirty years of age. (See Diagram 7.)
Foreign-born women also make up the greater part of this group. (See Diagram 8.) They do not know how to protect themselves from employers’ unreasonable demands, they must have work and they are not trained for anything except unskilled labor. They will work any number of hours exacted by the employer whatever the cost, until exhaustion renders them unfit for labor of any kind.