Full Citation
Title: Shaping Organizing Strategy and Public Policy for an Invisible Workforce
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2020
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Abstract: Americans now spend the majority of their food budgets eating outside the home (Economic Research Service 2016). This trend began in the previous century, a reflection of an economy built on longer work hours, multiple jobs, and increasingly precarious work conditions. Eating out is so widespread that restaurant workers make up nearly 10 percent of the private sector workforce, totaling more than fourteen million jobs. In fact, the restaurant industry is growing on pace to surpass manufacturing as the fourthlargest employer by 2020. The industry is resilient and was one o( the few to grow through the Great Recession, quickly bouncing back from a short employment dip. However, employment growth has not meant greater prosperity for workers. Restaurant workers live in poverty at more than twice the rate of the rest of the workforce; they are a plurality of minimum wage workers and more than half of workers earning below minimum wage' (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018). A segment of the restaurant workforce is subject to a subminimum wage. More than one-third of all restaurant workers live in states where the hourly subminimum wage for tipped workers is only $2.13, and nearly three-quarters Live in states where the subminimum wage falls below the federal minimum of $7 .25. As a result, five of the ten lowest-paying occupations in the country are in the restaurant industry.
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Authors: Avila, Veronica; Fletes-Romo, Christina; Reyes, Teofilo
Editors: Greenbaum, Susan; Jacobs, Glenn; Zinn, Prentice
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Volume Title: Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publisher Location: USA
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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