WAGES.

The wage of restaurant workers is of immediate interest to everyone who enters a restaurant. You not only pay for your food, but your tip helps to pay the waitress’s salary. It is upon this source of income that she depends for the greater part of her earnings. Any study of wages in this branch of industry must take into consideration not only that tips form a large part of the income of waitresses but that the majority of women get all their meals at the restaurant, or the equivalent of $3.00 a week in addition to actual wages.[7]Professor Streightoff has fixed upon $9.00 a week as the minimum amount upon which a girl can live independently in New York City.[8]Eighty-seven per cent of all women restaurant workers are being paid less than $9.00, but when food and tips are estimated and added, the proportion receiving less than a living wage is thirty-one per cent. While it is true therefore that the majority of workers in restaurants are earning enough to support themselves, it is a matter for grave concern that so large a number of women are being forced below the lowest point at which they can maintain health and decency.

Moreover this $9.00 a week minimum does not allow for saving against illness, dentist’s bills, unemployment or any other emergency. Taking $10.00 a week as the least upon which a girl can live and save, we find that forty-nine per cent. of these women are receiving in actual wages or their equivalent less than this amount. A few restaurant workers live at their place of employment, thus receiving lodging as well as board, but as this is true of only four per cent., the proportion is too small to affect appreciably the wage scale as a whole.

It is upon the kitchen and pantry hands who make up twenty-eight per cent. of all the workers that the burden of low wages falls most heavily. Waitresses have the opportunity to make tips, cooks receive comparatively fair wages because their work requires a certain amountof skill, but the other women cannot make tips and their unskilled labor is very poorly paid. One-third are receiving less than $6.00 a week, and three-fourths less than $7.00. (See Diagram 9.)

Diagram 9.—Weekly Wages of Women Employed in Restaurants.

The income of a restaurant worker is not clear gain. Certain expenses are involved in the work which she must meet herself. In restaurants where a special dress is required the waitress must provide her own uniforms, and she must also either wash them herself, or pay for having them laundered. Two clean uniforms a week is the usual requirement and in some cases three. The report of the United States Labor Department estimates that it costs a girl about $0.63 a week for the laundering of her aprons alone.[9]It costs $0.25 to have a uniform laundered, which means $1.13 must be deducted from the $3.50 a week usually paid to waitresses in tea-rooms, where special dresses are always required. In one New York tea-room the girls must have two sets of uniforms, a white dress with white shoes, and a blue dress with black shoes. Each uniform costs $2.50.

Fines also eat into the restaurant worker’s earnings. Girls are commonly fined for lateness, one particular restaurant exacting $0.25 if a girl is ten minutes late. Her pay is always cut for breakage, and in some places a certain amount is deducted weekly whether she breaks any dishes or not. Also, mistakes in adding up checks, either over or under the correct amount, and mistakes in orders, must be paid for by the waitress. “Those are the things that make the girls mad,” said one. In one New York tea-room this summer, a customer was served with hot coffee, when she had asked for iced tea, the waitress misunderstanding the order. The mistake was corrected and the iced tea substituted. When the waitress brought the customer her check, however, both tea and coffee were charged, and the girl laid down twenty cents upon the table. “You know, we have to pay for our mistakes,” she said.

What low wages mean in actual living cannot be expressed by figures. Poor quarters in questionable parts of the city, clothing of the most utilitarian kind, no money for the pretty things that every well-constituted girl wants, nothing for recreation, and worst of all, debtsafter illness or unemployment which take the very heart out of a girl in the bitter struggle to pay them off. The proprietor of a Buffalo employment agency remarked, “Look at the Wants Ads; with the many factories in Buffalo you will find the list “Help Wanted for Restaurants” equals that of “Help Wanted for Factory Work,” and what does that mean?—Simply that the restaurant workers are a discontented lot and all because of the excessively long hours and low wages.”

Diagram 10.-Comparison of Weekly Wages (black line) and Weekly Income (dotted line) of Waitresses in Restaurants.

Tipping is a direct drag upon wages. When the public is perfectly willing to contribute part of a waitress’s wage, why should not the employer take advantage of this fact and pay her less? That is surely to be expected and is almost universally the case. Many girls, accustomed to making a good deal in tips or “scale,” as they call it, would not be willing to work for $9.00 a week and no tips, for they can often make more than this amount. But the better class of girl would prefer a living wage and no tips. As matters stand now, however, they are a very necessary part of a girl’s income.

Comparing the weekly wage and the weekly income of waitresses as shown inDiagram 10, we find that without tips only 8 per cent. make as much as $9.00 a week, while with tips 50 per cent. receive $9.00 or more. The custom of tipping has two distinct disadvantages. First, it is an unreliable source of income. A girl may reasonably expect to make a certain amount in tips, but she cannot count upon doing so. The danger here is not only that she will receive less than it is possible for her to live on, but that she will get into debt, trusting to luck that her tips will be large enough to get her out. It is very easy to be over-confident. A tea-room waitress said: “Sometimes I make $12.00 a week in tips, sometimes almost nothing. You can’t depend on people.” Tea-rooms are the greatest sinners in respect to making their waitresses depend upon tips. The usual wage in several of the well-known New York tea-rooms is $3.50 a week for full time, which is ten or twelve hours a day.

The other aspect of tipping presents a more subtle danger. The girls need the money and they deliberately work for it, partly by good service, and partly by adopting an intimate personal tone toward their men customers. This leads naturally to familiarity on the man’s part and establishes a personal relation between them. Most of the girls quite frankly admit making “dates” with strange men. In one restaurant a woman was pointed out in incredulous admiration by the other waitresses. “Her husband has been dead four years, and she hasn’t gone out with a man yet,” they said. These “dates” are made with no thought on the part of the girl beyond getting the good time which she cannot afford herself, but the outcome is often a tragedy. The restaurants in one city of the state forbid unnecessary conversation between waitress and customer because conditions resulting from the practice became so flagrant. The result of this custom is that girls are approached to whom any attention from their men customers is most distasteful. The report of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says: “Many of the waitresses complain of the annoying attention of male customers. Many girls said, however, that if they speak sharply to a customer or offend him, they are likely to be reprimanded by the head waitress and may even lose their position.”[10]

The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago considers tipping a vicious system. “The giving of tips should be abolished because of their pernicious effect. A young girl who under any other circumstances would not dream of accepting money from a man will accept it in the guise of a tip. In the hands of a vicious man this tip establishes between him and the girl a relation of subserviency and patronage which may easily be made the beginning of improper attentions. The most conscientious girl, dependent upon tips to eke out her slender wage, finds it difficult to determine just where the line of propriety is crossed. Thus, in addition to the other dangers surrounding the girls employed in hotels and restaurants, they encounter the lack of respect which curiously attaches itself to one who accepts a gratuity.”[11]

Diagram 11.—Length of Time Unemployed in Past Year.[12]

Closely connected with the question of wages is the possibility of being out of a job. If a girl is earning $10.00 a week she may be able, with the most careful saving, to lay aside enough to tide her over two or three weeks of unemployment. But the savings from a $10.00 weekly wage do not last long. Twenty-eight per cent. of these women were out of work one month or longer in the past year because of the slack season, illness, change of their place of employment or for some other reason. The girl who cannot save is in a desperate condition indeed. For her, prolonged unemployment means debt, heart breaking anxiety and dependence.

Girls in restaurant work do not get vacations with pay except in very rare instances. One well-known New York firm having tea-rooms in various parts of the city, is to be congratulated on the fact that it does give its waitresses a vacation with pay. A few of the married women, or those who have families to care for them, can afford to take time out of the year’s work for a rest. But when a girl is not working, it is for the most part a matter of stern necessity and inevitably means a time of struggle and suffering.

Restaurants do not labor under the difficulties of seasonal employment. We should expect to find a steadiness in this occupation which the facts do not bear out. It is therefore evident that the instability of the work and constant shifting is due to the unsatisfactory nature of the employment itself. The large proportion of workers out of employment for one month or more a year (20%) is striking evidence of this fact.

Diagram 12.—Weekly Wages of Women Employed in Restaurants according to Length of Time in this Occupation.

Restaurant work is a “blind alley” trade. There is little opportunity for development or advancement. What training is necessary can be acquired in a few weeks, and the only position to which a girl can look forward is that of head waitress. There are no recognized degrees of skill in any part of the work connected with a restaurant. On the contrary, the tendency is in the direction of wearing girls out by overstrain rather than of giving them a chance. The girls who have been in the work the shortest time get higher pay than those who have been in it longest. Sixty-five per cent. of those who had been working less than a year were getting $6.00 or more a week, while only fifty-five per cent. of those who had been working over ten years were receiving as much. (See Diagram 12.) The woman who remains in restaurant work for more than a few years gradually loses her strength and ability, and can get a position only with an inferior type of restaurant, where the necessity for having a job forces her to accept whatever wage is offered her.

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