Consumers' League of New York City

“ The wage of restaurant workers is of immediate interest to everyone who enters a restaurant. You not only pay for your food, but your tip helps to pay the waitress’s salary. It is upon this source of income that she depends for the greater part of her earnings. Any study of wages in this branch of industry must take into consideration not only that tips form a large part of the income of waitresses but that the majority of women get all their meals at the restaurant, or the equivalent of $3.00 a week in addition to actual wages. ”

“ Girls in restaurant work do not get vacations with pay except in very rare instances. One well-known New York firm having tea-rooms in various parts of the city, is to be congratulated on the fact that it does give its waitresses a vacation with pay. A few of the married women, or those who have families to care for them, can afford to take time out of the year’s work for a rest. But when a girl is not working, it is for the most part a matter of stern necessity and inevitably means a time of struggle and suffering.
Restaurants do not labor under the difficulties of seasonal employment. ”

“ The low standards of the European peasant class from which restaurant workers are largely recruited, drag down all standards. No other result is possible under present conditions. They live—but how? Low wages, miserably long hours, no opportunity to fit themselves for their new surroundings—this is what we offer these young peasant girls who come to America confidently expecting better things than they have left behind. ”

“ Most of the girls quite frankly admit making “dates” with strange men. In one restaurant a woman was pointed out in incredulous admiration by the other waitresses. “Her husband has been dead four years, and she hasn’t gone out with a man yet,” they said. These “dates” are made with no thought on the part of the girl beyond getting the good time which she cannot afford herself, but the outcome is often a tragedy. The restaurants in one city of the state forbid unnecessary conversation between waitress and customer because conditions resulting from the practice became so flagrant. ”

“ Usually a man is employed to carry away the empty dishes, but the waitresses must bring the trays loaded with food.” [5]
Besides the cost to endurance, nerves are at constant tension for hurry is the remorseless rule. A waitress must not only remember a multitude of orders and fill them quickly, but she must keep her temper under the exactions of the most trying customer. The cook must keep her head amid the confusion and noise of a hot, crowded kitchen. The kitchen girl must be everywhere at once with a helping hand and the dish-washer’s very job depends upon her quickness. ”

“ By working the employees in shifts of nine consecutive hours a day and six days a week, and by replacing women by men for night duty, the most undesirable features of restaurant work would be abolished. Such a plan has already been tried successfully in a number of New York restaurants, proving that it is possible and feasible to regulate hours.
To limit by law the hours of labor for women employed in restaurants cannot be considered a new or revolutionary step. New York is already far behind the majority of other states in this respect. ”

“ The day of a restaurant worker does not begin with her arrival at the restaurant nor end when she leaves. Half of these women live at a distance, taking thirty minutes or more to reach their place of employment. When this extra hour spent in going to and from work is added to a twelve hour day, it is a factor to be reckoned with. It means cutting off an already insufficient night’s rest, and, when a girl cannot afford carfare, a weary walk home after being on her feet all day. ”

“ Hence night work is, in a word, against nature. This injury to health is all the greater because sleep lost at night by working women is never fully made up by day. For, in the first place, sleep in the day time is not equal in recuperative power to sleep at night.... Moreover, quiet and privacy for sleep by day is almost impossible to secure. Upon returning home in the middle of the night or at dawn the workers can snatch at most only a few hours’ rest.”
Often a woman will have one week of night work alternating with a week of work in the day time. ”

“ Eighty-seven per cent of all women restaurant workers are being paid less than $9.00, but when food and tips are estimated and added, the proportion receiving less than a living wage is thirty-one per cent. While it is true therefore that the majority of workers in restaurants are earning enough to support themselves, it is a matter for grave concern that so large a number of women are being forced below the lowest point at which they can maintain health and decency. ”

“ The girls who have been in the work the shortest time get higher pay than those who have been in it longest. Sixty-five per cent. of those who had been working less than a year were getting $6.00 or more a week, while only fifty-five per cent. of those who had been working over ten years were receiving as much. (See Diagram 12.) The woman who remains in restaurant work for more than a few years gradually loses her strength and ability, and can get a position only with an inferior type of restaurant, where the necessity for having a job forces her to accept whatever wage is offered her. ”

“ And not only is this free day important on the score of health, but it is also the time for recreation and the strengthening of family ties. For the girl who has no leisure, no time for real relaxation and play, there is only a starved and empty existence. ”

“ Living as they do among their own people these young peasants have no opportunity to absorb American standards and customs. Their ignorance makes it easy for employers to exploit them, demanding hours of labor and paying wages to which no American girl would submit. An employment agent said: “My ’phone rings day and night—all want peasant girls for kitchen helpers because they are the only kind that will stand such long hours.” Attempts to organize restaurant workers in New York State have never succeeded. ”

“ The influence of the work in this particular, which we are unfortunately unable to study, because of the opposition it would inevitably arouse, leads me to believe that from this standpoint alone, there is a definite hazard to the child-bearing capacity of the woman. This is of vital consequence to society as a whole, as well as to the individual workers, and therefore well justifies every effort to correct the undesirable conditions that attend this occupation. ”

“ It is a significant fact that with few exceptions the restaurant worker is not known to settlements and girls’ clubs. She does not share the group interests and social life open to other working girls. Neither does she make friends with her fellow-workers—the spring and vitality needed to win and establish friendships has been lost under the deadening effect of overwork. ”

“ RESTAURANT WORK FROM A WORKER’S POINT OF VIEW.
“A nine hour law would be a very good thing. I think long hours are very bad for women in restaurants. Most of them have varicose veins and flat feet, and a large number suffer from stomach trouble. Look at me, I am strong and healthy, but when I’m through at night, I am just all in. It’s a dreadful nervous strain.
“Girls have to live on tips. If you tell the boss you can’t make any, he says you are no good and discharges you. ”

“ Secondly, there is a grave moral danger involved in [18] night work, especially for restaurant workers since at this time they are open to the attentions of an undesirable class of men. “I don’t like to work at night,” one young waitress said. “The men are always fresher to girls at night than in the day time. Perhaps it’s because so many of those gamblers come in drunk.” Nor is it safe for a woman to go home alone after twelve o’clock at night. Instances of hideous occurrences are familiar to everyone. ”

“ The majority of restaurant workers are foreigners. Less than one-third are American-born, and of these a great many have foreign-born parents and live among members of their own race, so that they can hardly be classed as Americans. The largest single group is made up of Austro-Hungarians. (See Diagram 2) . The demand for cheap, unskilled labor in this occupation calls for the kind of service which these girls and others of the European peasant class can give. The outdoor life in the fields of their native land fits them for the hard labor required in a restaurant kitchen. ”

“ It is admitted that there is no class of work in which so large a percentage of females is employed. The Legislature has recognized that the females working in restaurants should be protected to some extent, by providing in section 17 of the Labor Law that “Every person employing females—as waitresses in a hotel or restaurant shall provide and maintain suitable seats” but by the very nature of their work the employees have no opportunity to use these seats. ”

“ A man restaurant worker speaking of kitchen girls remarked, “It’s no work for a woman. They have to lift heavy pots full of vegetables and fill [14] in all the gaps. A man has some endurance, but a woman can’t stand it more than nine hours a day.” ”

“ Continuous standing and walking and the nervous strain entailed in serving many customers are features of both occupations. Besides this, restaurant work necessitates the lifting and carrying of heavy weights which may easily be disastrous not only to the worker herself, but to her children. ”

“ The evil resulting from restaurants being exempt from the provisions of the Labor Law relating to hours and day of rest, is shown in the fact that bakeries and confectionery establishments have added to their business the serving of sandwiches and lunches, and endeavor to escape the provisions of the law by claiming that they are exempt because they are operating a restaurant. ”

“ The law requires that girls in factories and stores have at least one-half hour off for luncheon. This does not apply to restaurant workers. The “one-meal” girls eat before and after serving, but the majority of the “two-meal” and full-time girls have no time at all for meals. They must eat when they can snatch a moment from their work. There were many complaints of indigestion and loss of appetite from the workers as a result of haste and irregularity in taking their meals. ”

“ They must be on their job continuously. In other restaurants the girls work on a “split trick,” that is, they have one or two hours off in the afternoon. This is a very unpopular arrangement. Not only does it keep them out late in the evening, but they cannot use their free time to good advantage. There is little opportunity for recreation or social intercourse during these hours because they come in the morning or afternoon when the girls’ friends are [16] all at work. Nor is there ordinarily time for fresh air and exercise, especially in the case of the kitchen workers. ”

“ There are no recognized degrees of skill in any part of the work connected with a restaurant. On the contrary, the tendency is in the direction of wearing girls out by overstrain rather than of giving them a chance. ”

“ At the present time, twenty-seven states regulate the number of hours that women may work in restaurants, five having the eight-hour day. [13] Clearly, therefore, the establishment of a normal working day for this class of workers is not only reasonable, but, in the opinion of the greater number of states, it is essential to the best welfare of their people as a whole. ”

“ There seems to be no good reason why the hours of employment of females in restaurants should not be subject to law as in mercantile establishments, and that all those employed in the same should enjoy the benefits of the day of rest law, as they do in other employments. ”

“ A girl may reasonably expect to make a certain amount in tips, but she cannot count upon doing so. The danger here is not only that she will receive less than it is possible for her to live on, but that she will get into debt, trusting to luck that her tips will be large enough to get her out. It is very easy to be over-confident. A tea-room waitress said: “Sometimes I make $12.00 a week in tips, sometimes almost nothing. ”

“ They have no legal redress for overwork; the law has neglected them. In the course of this investigation, a girl of twenty was found working one hundred and twenty-two hours a week—longer than the law allows factory employees to work in two weeks. Yet this is within the law. Although restaurants differ from stores and factories in keeping open more hours a day, and sometimes for the whole twenty-four, a system of shifts would do away with the scandalously long hours to which thousands of girls and women are bound. ”

“ The majority of girls—the better class of waitresses—if they could get a good living would be glad to do without tips. Of course it would be a revolution and would require a lot of agitation.
“Girls in restaurant work have greater temptations than most girls. Advances are always made, especially in certain districts. A great number go wrong because of so many advances.
“Nothing has ever been done for restaurant workers. The bosses all seem to think we are a lot of crooks. Waitresses think the same of them. Girls don’t change their jobs so often because they like to. ”

“ The person who has overworked is not only subject to the devastating action of fatigue poisons, but is a prey to any infections to which he may be exposed because he cannot throw them off. Working conditions which render large numbers of men and women susceptible to disease, and hence capable of spreading it, are a public menace. ”

“ There is no class of employees who serve the public so directly as do restaurant workers. Also, it is obviously of vital interest to the public that those who serve them in this way be strong and healthy since they are in a position peculiarly adapted to spread disease. ”

“ Hard work kept up for incredibly long hours, low pay, health impaired and resistance to disease lowered through fatigue—these are some of the facts which make action on our part necessary, that restaurant work may be a safe and wholesome occupation. ”

“ The most conscientious girl, dependent upon tips to eke out her slender wage, finds it difficult to determine just where the line of propriety is crossed. Thus, in addition to the other dangers surrounding the girls employed in hotels and restaurants, they encounter the lack of respect which curiously attaches itself to one who accepts a gratuity. ”