“A common misconception among American dinners is restaurant workers are just young people saving money for college or earning a few extra dollars while attending high school” (Saru, P.5). In reality, there are people of all ages ranging from 20-50 years old working in the food service industry. Workers in the food service industry come from different backgrounds, different races, and different genders. All workers are exposed to the injustice of wage left and mistreatment on the job. “People of color and immigrants face significant barriers in obtaining those livable wage jobs” (Saru, P.3). Without opportunities for better jobs with better wages, people of color and immigrants must settle to work in food service jobs. These individuals …show more content…
“For the last two decades, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers has been frozen at $2.13 an hour” (Saru, P.5). Tipped employees rely on their customers to pay their bills instead of their employer. This creates a larger issue because many times tipped employees will not receive the proper tip they deserve or nothing at all. When employees want a promotion for better pay they quickly realize the barriers of moving up the work ladder. “People of color discovered that race affected their ability to hold a job and move up the ladder” (Saru, P.3). As Mamdouh points out in the reading you never see the dark employees in the front. You are always greeted by lighter skin employers. The reason being is because the darker skinned employees are in the kitchen. I’ve to notice this as well when dining out. In particular at a Chinese restaurant when I got a glimpse of the kitchen as the door opened I noticed all the workers in the back were latinos speaking in Spanish. Most likely those workers will never be promoted to work in the front as waiters or cashiers. Food services are maintaining racial segregation and creating more inequalities in the
People slave for a number of hours of work and find themselves with minimum wage salaries and working with people they don’t want to be around with. In her article Serving in Florida, Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover as a low-wage worker for various jobs to expose the working conditions of working class Americans. Throughout her essay, she discusses how the employees are fearful of losing their jobs even though they are forced to work in inhumane conditions such as long hours, with no breaks between shifts. While undercover, Ehrenreich attempts to make an argument on how the upper and middle class can find it difficult to survive under minimum wage jobs and allow readers to figure out what can be done to change the restaurant business.
There were two major issues that Ehrenreich has with working in the restaurant. The first one is the management and the second issue is the amount of money she makes. The management is views as the enemy to the employees; making new rules for the staff and the endless accusations about the employees behaviors. The salary for restaurant employees makes it hard to secure housing, prescription drugs, and any unexpected expense. “Serving in Florida” written by Barbara Ehrenreich is a reflected recap of her time working in the restaurant industry.
Since the Industrial Revolution in the United States of America, working conditions for women and minorities have not been given equal pay or top positions in the work place. Women being degraded by the men in charge, and minorities constantly at odds with one another so they will not form a Union. Such things keep those with low-status in the job in line, and not feel they are equal to the ones in charge. People from other countries are in search for a better life elsewhere, and take the risk of going to the United States illegally to seek out the American Dream. The articles Working at Bazooms by Meika Loe and At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die by Charlie LeDuff deal with the working conditions for women and minorities. Workers in both articles have to deal with having terrible working conditions, harassment in the workplace, low-status within the job, and the constant fear of job loss.
The editorial discusses minimum wage disparities in the restaurant industry. It starts by discussing what a “minimum wage worker’s” day might look like, giving an example of a dishwasher, who has scars on his arms. The author uses this imagery
Because workplace discrimination is closely tied with underemployment and unemployment, it’s important to know why blacks continue to obtain lower positions and promotions than their white co-workers. In The Social Psychological Costs of Racial Segmentation, Tyrone A. Forman discusses explanations of the separation of middle class African Americans in the workplace. The amount of blacks and whites co-working has grown, but blacks are often given the jobs with the lower prestige and rarely any chance of promotion. Despite increasing numbers of middle-class blacks working the same types of jobs, African Americans are primarily segmented...
Over the last 50 years, the fast food industry did not only sold hamburgers and french fries. It has been a key factor for vast social changes throughout America. It has been responsible for breaking traditional American values and reinstating new social standards that specifically aims to benefit the industry’s growth. These social standards have inevitably changed the way the American youth respond to education and self-responsibility. Eric Schlosser, an author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, excellently uses logic to present the tactics used by the fast food industry to cheapen and promote labor along with the social changes that occurred in the American youth as a result. Schlosser aims to dismantle and dissect
Institutions in the businesses sector are swarming in racial discrimination, much of which is covert and difficult to detect and prove. Racial discrimination excludes, marginalizes and exploits those citizens who are discriminated against, ceasing any opportunity for economic progress and development. Under certain regulations some businesses are required to diversify their workplace by hiring certain amounts of people of color, but in reality these small quotas do not do much for the overall condition of the people who are being discriminated against. Businesses that fail to take action on racial discrimination tend to have lower levels of productivity. This stems from employees not being interested in working hard, or because people with exceptional talents and skills choose to shy away from certain places of employment due to the fear of racial discrimination. Employees who feel wronged also tend to switch jobs, forcing the organization to spend more time and resources on hiring and training new employees, besides coping with the low productivity of a new employee. (Nayab)The effects of racial discrimination in the American work force could be identified with funded research on the topic. With ample data employers will be able to better understand the negative affects that racial discrimination have
The reality of wage differences between men and women is that above all changes women continue to earn less than men. Countless arguments have promoted that wage inequality has changed and that everyone finally receives an equal amount of pay. “For women of color, the gap is largest of all: In 2006, black and Hispanic women earned 86 and 87 cents on the white man’s dollar, respectively,” (Mcswane 2). If a woman is lucky enough she will get an equal pay compared to a man doing the same job. But it is challenging for a woman of a minority background to achieve this. Not only are women paid less because of their sex, but also because of their race. There seems to be a mentality that because someone is a woman and a minority that they cannot do the same job as men or that women do not have the same education as the men, so employers do not have to pay them the same. “When the numbers are broken down by district, they 're pretty hard to ignore. Women in Texas are being utterly screwed financially, according to the data compiled by AAWU, with women earning anywhere from 66 percent of what men do in some districts, to the top end of things, which is about 89 percent,” (Leicht 4). The proof cannot be ignored. It i...
In today’s workplace, African Americans continue to be subjected to overt discrimination. This can take the form of ethnic jokes, racial slurs and exclusionary behaviors by Euro-American co-workers and managers. Even more disturbing is the verbal abuse, calculated mistreatment and even physical threats experienced by some African Americans while on the job. African Americans have also faced overt acts such as being reassigned to lower level projects, not receiving a promotion even though they were equally qualified and receiving less wages than other employees, even less qualified new hires. The discrimination can be so pervasive that African Americans feel uneasy and threatened, demotivated and disrespected, eventually feeling forced to leave to search for other employment.
In relation to workplace discrimination, wages rank among the issues that affect working Asian-Americans. According to ChangHwan Kim and Author Sakamoto, Asian Americans earn 8% lower wages compared to their White counterparts. Furthermore, they also found out that education did not significantly improve the wage earning situation for Asian Americans. Asian American males with college degrees still earn a lower wage compared to a White male with a similar level of education. Although the 8% difference may not seem to be much, it is a clear indication that racial discrimination for Asian Americans still exists through wage rates (Charles and Guryan 509).
Ehrenreich didn’t want to be a waitress any more than some waitresses, but she did it for her research. Ehrenreich once stated that, “Waitres sing is also something I’d like to avoid, because I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen.” (13). Her first job was at Hearthside, a restaurant in Key West, Florida. She was hired as a waitress, starting at $2.43 plus tips. She worked the afternoon shift. Hearthside was being managed by a West Indian man by name of Phillip. The management wasn’t the best. They treated their employees disrespectfully. At an employee meeting, they were threatened by the management. Ehrenreich stated, “I have not been treated this way-lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusation-since junior high school” (24). When they were just standing around, the manager would give them extra work to do. According to Ehrenreich, “You start dragging out each little chore because if the manager on duty catches you in an idle moment, he will give you something far nastier to do. So I wipe, I clean, consolidate catsups bottles and recheck the cheesecake supply, even tour the tables to make sure the customer evaluation is standing perkily.” (22). They were hired at Hearthside to serve the customers. There are twenty-six tables in the whole restaurant. All the food must be placed on the food trays; small items were to be carried in a bowl, and no refills on the lemonade (1...
According to the United States Department of Labor, “Restaurants in the United States pay servers less than minimum wage, as low as two dollars and change per hour.” For restaurant employees or any employee whose income is based on the tips alone, living on a low salary and whatever tips they manage to earn a night creates an unstable income. That might be okay for a teenager trying to earn some extra cash during the summer, but what about single parents who have to afford day-care services and put food on the table? In addition, in some restaurants, employers do not provide benefits such as health insurance. According to a March 2014 report from the National Economic Council, “...servers are nearly three times as likely as other workers to experience poverty” (Stuart). Plus, some waitstaff have to rely on welfare programs to survive alone. “Tipped workers are heavily reliant on public subsidies to help make ends meet,” reports research economist, Sylvia Allegretto, who studies at the University of California and is a former waitress. She elaborates, “Who helps them bridge the gap? Taxpayers”
For millions, fast food restaurants are the source of positive associations with birthday parties, play dates and accessible comfort food. For others, they represent a lifeline meal on a busy day, or the secret to quieting a cranky toddler on a long trip because hurrying residents of cities have no time to cook a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fast food presents even in the lives of people who are trying
Abstract- Racial discrimination happens all the time and most of us are unaware of it. The most common place for this to happen is in the workplace. Now people can be discriminated against because of their race, religion, or any other numerous things. Also, discrimination can occur during the job interview or even after you got the job. This paper will shoe the effects of racial discrimination and how it can be prevented. In addition there are some very important laws that deal specifically with discrimination, like the NAACP or Affirmative Action. These both will be discussed.
Although these skilled jobs are necessary we must also introduce a stable institution that benefits the low skill jobs. Those working in the low paying jobs are often exploited. Standing states in his article that in order for change to occur for the precariat or flexible job positions they must be recognized, represented and redistributed. Upright highlights how women are largely employed in low paying jobs. Inequalities in the work place for racial minorities such as blacks and women are common and there are policies in place to prohibit it; however, Biebly says, “Organizational policies are not the same as organization practices” (pg. 80). Working women often face an additional level of discrimination and are often torn between home and work. Women try to fully integrate family and work and often find themselves quitting because of mutually reinforcing and interlocking factors according to Stone’s article. This self-reinforcing system higher women at a lower pay than their husbands, with jobs structured toward flexible positions, which in turn limits their overall earning capability. These conditions and other characteristics can lead to less gender and racial inclusion, according to Emeka unemployment among black communities have regularly been higher and can be linked to attributes such as, but not