Living in a womans body: hospitality workers have always suffered abuse. In the pandemic, it got worse – The Guardian

After working as a bartender in Washington DC for many years, Ifeoma Ezumakis body reached its limit during the pandemic. For Ezumaki and millions of other restaurant employees, working during the pandemic often, in the US, for a sub-minimum wage became a source of immeasurable suffering. Tips went down because sales went down, while customer harassment and hostility went up. Ezumaki and her colleagues had to become public health marshals, in addition to cocktail servers; she was asked to enforce social distancing, mask wearing and even vaccination requirements.

One evening, a customer at the bar asked her to pull down her mask so that he could see her face a request that became so common from male customers during the pandemic that hospitality workers started referring to it as maskual harassment. When Ezumaki refused, he said: Well, I guess youre not going to eat tonight.

The comment exemplified the power that some male customers, managers and even colleagues feel they have over womens bodies in the restaurant industry. While Ezumaki and her colleagues wished to protect their bodies and the bodies of their families by wearing a mask, many male customers made it clear that they believed they had the right to control female waiters bodies, particularly when the waiters were dependent on tips. Many have reported male customers asking them to take off their masks so that they can judge their looks and tip on that basis.

It is not just customers. My campaign group, One Fair Wage, and Survivors Know, an organisation for survivors of workplace sexual misconduct, collaborated on a report that said staff reports of managers requesting sexual favours at US branches of the golf-themed restaurant chain Topgolf had increased in the past two years. Due to the pandemic causing a reduction in tips, workers were more reliant on managers to give them the best shifts and tables, so rejecting such requests or advances could affect their pay.

But the restaurant industry violated womens bodies long before the pandemic. After the emancipation of enslaved people in the US, the restaurant lobby sought the right to hire newly freed Black people, mostly women, and pay them nothing at all, forcing them to live off customer tips. Restaurants are still able to pay tipped workers a federal minimum wage of just $2.13 (1.57) an hour based on the legacy of slavery, forcing them to obtain tips to make up the rest of their wage. Studies have also found that hospitality workers suffer among the highest rates of sexual harassment of any industry because they must tolerate inappropriate customer behaviour in return for essential tips.

That said, there is so much hope. Women are rising up like never before. Restaurant workers are refusing to allow their bodies to be objectified. In response, thousands of restaurants have had to raise wages to recruit staff. Employers are joining forces with those demanding one fair wage a full minimum wage, with tips on top. The question now is whether policymakers will grant Ezumaki and her peers the bodily integrity they have always deserved.

Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage and the director of the Food Labor Research Center

Originally posted here:

Living in a womans body: hospitality workers have always suffered abuse. In the pandemic, it got worse - The Guardian