Restaurant workers to rally against proposed end to tipping

Members of Syracuse’s restaurant industry wil protest the elimination of the minimum wage tip credit Monday morning at SUNY-ESF.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo originally proposed the elimination of the tip credit as part of his State of the State address at the beginning of this year. With the tip credit, restaurants in New York state are allowed to pay tipped workers less than minimum wage as long as their tips make up for those smaller wages.

The tip credit allows restaurants to pay competitive wages to back-of-house workers, such as chefs, by keeping wages lower for front-of-house workers, such as servers and bartenders, protest organizer Maggie Raczynski said.

“Our fear is that if they get rid of the tip credit, they’re gonna cut jobs, they’re gonna cut hours, the prices are gonna increase to a point where they’re gonna alienate the guests,” Raczynski said.

Ending the tip credit would raise the minimum wage that restaurants must pay servers, bartenders and other tipped workers, but it could cost restaurants thousands of dollars if they maintain the same staffing levels.

Raczynski is a server at a corporate restaurant in the Albany area. If the restaurant she worked at were to maintain its same staffing levels after the tip credit was eliminated, it would have to pay $105,000 per year in extra wage costs, she said.

Restaurants, on average, have a profit margin of only 5 percent, Forbes reported.

The Maine legislature reinstated a tip credit last year after facing backlash from restaurant workers when it eliminated the credit in 2015, the Press Herald reported. Joshua Chaisson, a bartender and server from Maine and an organizer for Monday’s rally, was part of that movement.

Chaisson helped form the Restaurant Workers of America, an organization that aims to protect tipping and tip credits in the restaurant industry.

“The reality of our situation is that we don’t need to be saved,” Chaisson said.

About ten servers gathered in Joey’s Restaurant in Syracuse, crafting signs from poster board to hold at a rally on Monday morning. Organizers said more than 200 people will testify at the hearing at SUNY-ESF on Monday, and a large portion of those testimonies will be provided by restaurant workers, such as Leslie Verstringhe.

Verstringhe is a server from the Panorama Restaurant and Lounge in Rochester who has worked in the restaurant industry for 15 years. She said she fears people will lose their jobs, fewer people will go to restaurants and that small businesses will close down.

“It’s going to hurt us instead of helping us,” she said. “My income is going to go down instead of increasing.”

Several restaurant workers said they disagreed that the issue was related to women’s rights and sexual harassment.

In his address, Cuomo said tipping disproportionately affects women and people of color, and that it subjects tipped workers to higher rates of sexual harassment than workers who aren’t reliant on tips.

“Do I think that it doesn’t happen anywhere? No. It happens everywhere in every industry,” Raczynski said. “And if you are in a position where you’re being sexually harassed, and it’s being allowed by your boss, that’s a bad situation and you should get out of it.”

The servers will make their way to SUNY-ESF’s Gateway Center, where several of them will testify at a New York State Department of Labor hearing Monday morning.

Nancy Ohara, a server at Joey’s in Syracuse, shared similar sentiment to Verstringhe. She’s worked as a server for 45 years. She said the restaurant business does not need the minimum wage increase for tipped workers.

“There’s nothing wrong. It’s not broken. Don’t fix it,” Ohara said.