The Department strives to eliminate harassing conduct at the earliest possible stages before it becomes severe or pervasive enough to violate the law.Įmployees who believe that they have been subjected to, or have witnessed, any harassing conduct should report the matter promptly to a person in their supervisory chain, their Agency Workplace Equality Compliance Office (WECO), or, for regional office employees, the Regional Administrator of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management (OASAM) in the region where the conduct took place. We will take swift and appropriate corrective or disciplinary action to address incidents of harassment, including sexual harassment, which is prohibited by our policies regardless of whether the harassment violates federal law. The Department's harassment policy applies equally to employees, applicants for employment, and contractors. Harassment includes unreasonable interference with an employee's work performance, actions that create a hostile or abusive work environment, and actions that result in an employment decision affecting the employee, which is based upon the employee's acceptance or rejection of such conduct. The Department defines harassing conduct as any unwelcome conduct, verbal or physical, based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, parental status, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliation or belief, or any other prohibited factor. Department of Labor maintain a model work environment in which no employee, applicant for employment, or contractor is subject to unlawful harassment and where all employees, applicants, and contractors are treated with dignity and respect. A third way, of course, is to encourage women in the industry, like Piatti, to speak up about their experiences and demand change.It is imperative that we at the U.S. Second, customers can start to hold businesses accountable by speaking up about mistreatment of women. Piatti presents two major ways the restaurant industry can become safer and fairer to women: First, the government can increase the minimum wage for tipped workers (Democrats recently introduced Fair Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $12 by 2020 if passed).
Not only would raising the minimum wage help these women avoid poverty and empower them against sexual harassment, but it may also help lessen the gender pay gap, because women are disproportionately represented in minimum wage work. Tips are meant to make up the difference, but as a White House report on how raising the minimum wage helps women notes, "this provision is difficult to enforce." But according to federal law, minimum wage workers who rely on tips are only guaranteed a base salary of $2.13 per hour, meaning that unless you live in a state with more generous wage laws, you're out of luck.
#HARASSED ON THE JOB FULL#
One way to improve the environment for female servers might be to raise the minimum wage. Minimum wage for tipped workers varies from state to state - in California, for example, restaurant servers make the full minimum of $9 an hour. On top of all this, women often stay silent about the harassment out of fear of losing their jobs. While the details differ, this is a common experience in the industry, in which 70 percent of minimum wage workers are women. A 2014 report by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United found that 90 percent of female restaurant workers experience sexual harassment from customers, and they're also more likely to be asked to "sexualize their behavior and/or appearance" by management. The harassment is especially bad for female servers who make the minimum $2.13 an hour, according to the ROCU report, because they are "twice as likely" to be sexually harassed than women who make full minimum wage. Feeling objectified, devalued and unsafe practically became part of my job description. Other male coworkers left me anonymous, sexually explicit notes on my windshield while I was parked in our employee parking lot. One supervising server in particular repeatedly invited me to bars so that he could offer to buy me drinks with the tip money I had worked hard to earn. All the supervising servers, who enjoyed their full tips and a portion of ours, were men. New servers were eligible to become supervising servers after a subjective approval process.
I was one of several new servers - a group comprised of about 2/3 women and 1/3 men.
She describes tippers calling her "sweetie" and "sugar" at 16, and at 21, the on-the-job harassment got worse:Īt the restaurant, I was paid minimum wage and only received a portion of pooled tips. If you are a woman who has ever worked as a server, waitress, or bartender, then Amber Akemi Piatt's story about sexism and low wages in the Guardian will be all too familiar.