2024 Election Statement
Statement from ROC United Interim President Teófilo Reyes
Last Tuesday was a doozy of a night. Trump won a convincing victory, capturing every swing state in the nation. As one of my workforce development colleagues at ROC Michigan told me, American voters showed us who they were and we should believe them. Working Black, Brown, and women voters will bear the brunt of the incoming administration’s policies. Organized texts threatening Black people were sent across the country last week, and where I live Trump supporters circled an elementary school yelling at and terrorizing children. We know restaurant workers will be in the crosshairs, but we have been here before and we know how to confront the challenges.
Last July at the Republican convention, giddy Trump supporters waved signs calling for mass deportations. Later, Trump accused Haitian immigrants of eating cats and dogs, and his Vice-Presidential pick, JD Vance, said it didn’t matter if this was false because they wanted to prevent immigrants from poisoning the blood of the country. Vance also said he didn’t care if Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are there legally; to him, they are still “illegal.”
Across the country, nearly a quarter of the restaurant workforce is foreign-born, and in cities like New York and Los Angeles, it is well over 60 percent. An estimated 10 percent of the industry is undocumented, and in major cities, it is closer to 40 percent. If the Republicans follow through on this mandate, restaurant prices will skyrocket, and the National Restaurant Association’s (NRA) constant Chicken Little cry that the sky is falling will finally come true.
Roots of the Crisis
This is not new. During the Hoover Administration, local, state and federal authorities worked together to expel up to two million Mexicans, nearly half of them American citizens, to ensure Mexican Indians were not “polluting” the American bloodstream. Let’s drop the pretext. A majority of the white population, and some fellow traveling Latinos and Blacks, seem to pine for a vision of America that is isolated from the rest of the world and where social hierarchies are clearly followed. If we apply the prism of gender, there are plenty of women who either were not bothered by or actually approved of Trump’s promise to protect them “whether they like it or not.”
Democrats should not escape blame for our current predicament, though. It was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA into law, leading to the decimation of manufacturing in this country and the slow decline of the white working class. And Democrats voted for and supported George W Bush’s war of choice against Iraq that laid the groundwork for today’s wars of choice in Ukraine and the Middle East. The neoliberal imperialism supported by both parties led to the economic instability that both gave rise to the preeminence of the service sector and propelled Trump to power. That giant sucking sound as high wage jobs moved abroad created a vacuum filled by restaurants and the service sector. The restaurant sector grew relentlessly over the last several decades weathering multiple recessions and providing employment to nearly ten percent of the population (derailed only by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and a pandemic that shut the entire industry down.) Restaurants could not be outsourced abroad, and their political influence allowed them to create a monopsony, which means they could keep wages artificially low. It was Herman Cain as head of the National Restaurant Association that negotiated with the Clinton Administration to cement the $2.13 subminimum wage for tipped workers into federal law. There are sixteen states, largely south of the Mason-Dixon line, where tipped workers are still only paid $2.13 an hour, which means customers, not employers, actually pay those workers’ wages. Democrats are a big tent, so some might find this criticism unfair, but the breaking of norms did not begin eight years ago. The decisions that we make today will have ramifications for generations to come.
Past Wins and Current Threats
In 2016, when Trump first came to power, ROC United rallied restaurant workers to stop Andrew Puzder’s nomination as Secretary of Labor. As CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr, Puzder advertised young women in bikinis to sell hamburgers, and advocated for lowering the minimum wage so he could pay his employees less. Puzder’s employees responded to our appeals in droves, filling out surveys that highlighted wage theft and pessimal working conditions, and speaking in front of congress members about their experiences. Thanks in no small part to their efforts, Puzder had to withdraw his nomination.
Nonetheless, the Department of Labor (DOL) under Trump set restaurant workers in their sights, first weakening the 80-20 rule that limited the amount of time a tipped worker earning a subminimum wage could spend engaging in non-tip generating labor, before then attempting to steal workers tips and make them the property of employers.
ROC led the fight to ensure workers could keep their tips, partnering with organizations around the country to deliver hundreds of thousands of comments to the DOL opposing that blatant power grab. Restaurant workers rose up to turn this defensive victory into a championship win for workers and ROC spent many long nights helping negotiate language that cemented tips as the property of tipped workers in the Fair Labor Standards Act, including penalties for scofflaws, and the possibility of tip sharing with the back-of-the house for any employer that did not pay a subminimum wage. We have many allies to thank for this, including NELP, Daily Kos, and MoveOn, but ROC’s efforts, under the previous Trump administration, actually led to stronger labor laws for tipped workers. This time around will certainly be harder, but we were not put on this earth to thrive without a struggle.
Restaurant workers had an ally in the Biden Administration. Under Biden, the DOL strengthened the 80-20 rule, overtime protections, wage standards for federal contractors including food service, and protections for independent contractors, and the Federal Trade Commission banned non-compete agreements that weighed heavily on low-wage front-line supervisors at Fast Food establishments. We made sure restaurant workers’ voices were heard in these decisions, rallying thousands of workers to submit comments that were cited in the final rules. However, these gains were all reversed by Trump appointed courts, but other good work continued. The Women’s Bureau at the DOL pushed a strong program to end sexual harassment, a particular scourge for restaurant workers, and OSHA began creating an indoor and outdoor heat standard to protect workers. That standard must be completed prior to the transfer of power both to cement Biden’s legacy and to unify workers when that standard is challenged. Greater worker mobilization is needed under any administration.
Important Wins and the Power of Worker Unity
There were some silver linings on Tuesday. Almost every ballot initiative measure recommendation in our voting guide went our way. In Alaska and Missouri, voters approved minimum wage increases and paid sick days; and remember that conservative Alaska is one of the few states without a lower wage for tipped workers. In Arizona, a resounding 75 percent of voters voted down a ballot measure that would have led to lower wages for tipped workers. In Nebraska, voters approved paid sick days by a similar margin. California’s initiative to raise the minimum wage to $18 is still too close to call, but Massachusetts voters soundly rejected a One Fair Wage initiative to phase out the subminimum wage.
In 2019, we changed our mission from advocacy to building worker power and uniting workers together from different backgrounds. We made this change after seeing the NRA mobilize workers in 2016 to demand the Maine legislature repeal a ballot initiative decision that would have phased out the subminimum wage. We saw similar mobilizations in New York, where the state repealed the subminimum wage for all tipped workers except restaurant workers, and DC where ballot initiatives turned the city into burnt turf for ROC that was only changed by the pandemic. It remains too easy for employers to scare workers into thinking they will lose their tips or their job if they actually are paid a full minimum wage. It doesn’t matter that tips are common in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Bozeman, and Anchorage, along with in every small town across California, Oregon, and Washington – especially for restaurant workers who haven’t had the opportunity to travel to those locations or don’t know the wage. The vast majority of diners have no idea what a worker’s wage is when they leave a tip, but the argument makes sense to any worker who needs their tips to make ends meet. Workers in Massachusetts, where we don’t currently have a presence, turned out in opposition to that ballot measure. We have seen major gains where we have had the resources to focus on building worker power, and we need more organizers in Michigan to defend a Supreme Court decision that will phase out the subminimum wage and raise paid sick days. The industry will be emboldened by the election results to strongarm the Michigan legislature into rolling back workers’ gains, and we will need to mobilize workers to ensure that does not happen.
Along with worker power, our focus on bringing workers together is and will be absolutely crucial. Both parties have at different times seen dividends from dividing America by race, age, gender, place of birth, and every other identity imaginable; and savvy employers have always preyed on these divisions to keep workers divided. But we have made strides bringing workers together from front and back-of-the house around their common interests, and this is one of the greatest divides in America. This will be our most important strength as we face our biggest challenge. Restaurant workers continue to face the highest rates of wage theft, sexual harassment, and unsafe working conditions. Lack of access to paid sick days means restaurant workers continue to be the largest source for reported cases of food borne illness. And all of this combined explains why restaurant workers are the second largest group by occupation to die from drug overdose (or fentanyl poisoning) after construction workers.