Restaurant employees and bartenders in want are “adopted” through Fb

By jimadmin On Jan 11, 2021

(CNN) – The food service industry has been hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. In communities in the United States, people “adopt” restaurant workers on social media to ease their troubles.

A search for “Adopt a Server” groups and pages on Facebook returns over 40 results in various locations across the United States from New Jersey to Kentucky, Missouri, California, Florida and more.

In the Pittsburgh area, more than 1,000 people have joined the Adopt a Server / Bartender Allegheny County group since it was founded before Thanksgiving.

Erin Matuch, a 32-year-old Pittsburgh woman who worked as a server in her college years, started the group after reading about a similar initiative in another state.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Matuch told CNN.

Matuch runs her own home business, selling screen printed T-shirts, and using Facebook to promote her activities. She decided to use her skills on the platform to start the community and spread the word after realizing that there were no such groups in her area.

She approves everyone in the group, gives tips to people asking for help, what information they want to share, and connects helpers with people in need. Most need cash and help buy groceries and housewares, Matuch said.

“The group is growing every day and people are helping each other every day. The servers are even helping each other with what little they have,” she told CNN.

RELATED: Healthcare Workers Are Adopted by People Who Want to Thank Them for Their Sacrifices

Similar efforts have been made on social media to support other groups of people affected by the pandemic, from single mothers to teachers and healthcare workers.

“We’ve certainly seen people come together in groups to help others during the pandemic, especially in local communities,” Leonard Lam, a Facebook spokesman, told CNN.

Last year, people raised more than $ 100 million for Covid-19 causes through Facebook and Instagram, according to Facebook.

Help in several ways

Matuch believes the group offers more than just a helping hand for those who need it: “It also helps them know that they are not alone, that others are in the same boat and that it is not their fault.”

In Pennsylvania, where the Matuch group operates, a three-week indoor eating ban went into effect on December 12th and was lifted on January 4th. Currently, indoor dining is allowed with a 50% or 25% reduced capacity, depending on the restaurant’s self-certification to comply with relevant guidelines to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Tara Allen, a 39-year-old who worked as a cook, waitress and bartender in a bar in Meadville, two and a half hours north of Pittsburgh, told CNN she lost her job when the temporary ban went into effect.

“When the time came to come back, I wasn’t put back on the schedule,” Allen said. Allen lost two jobs during the pandemic, but this time she was not eligible for unemployment insurance, she said.

She found relief in the Facebook group Matuch founded, where people helped her pay for her hotel stay and household needs while she was between apartments and started a new job she could find, explained Everyone.

Besides the material support, the most important thing everyone said about the group was “the feeling of security and that I am not a burden”.

“Bumps happen in the road and I had a pothole road in Pennsylvania,” Allen said.

A crisis upon a crisis

The scale of the hospitality crisis cannot be overstated, and it has exposed an already vulnerable workforce who depend on tips for a large portion of their income.

According to the National Restaurant Association, around 110,000 restaurants, or 17% of restaurants, are permanently closed or will be closed long-term across the country. The group wrote to Congress last month calling on them to adopt an industry-specific coronavirus relief package.

Just last month, food and drink employment fell by 372,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as of Friday.

Between March and April 2020, more than 5.4 million food and drink jobs were lost. This is the largest monthly decline over the course of the pandemic, according to BLS data. While many of these jobs have been restored, the BLS estimates that a total of over 2.4 million jobs in the industry have been lost since February 2020.

“During the pandemic, workers were devastated,” Saru Jayaraman told CNN. She is the president of One Fair Wage, a national non-profit advocating for tipped workers, and the director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley.

“Even before the pandemic, this was the second largest and fastest-growing workforce of 13.6 million restaurant workers in the US, but it has been the absolute worst-paid workforce in the country for decades,” she said.

According to Jayaraman, 70 percent of America’s workers are women. “They are mostly single mothers, women of color, who before the pandemic really struggled to make ends meet because they earned a minimum wage and were dependent on tips.”

With the federal minimum wage for tipped workers stagnating at $ 2.13 an hour since 1991, there are only seven states where employers must pay tipped workers the full state minimum wage before tipping. This is not the case in the other 43 states.

Among workers surveyed by One Fair Wage during the pandemic, many reported that they failed to qualify for unemployment insurance because they had not met the minimum income threshold for it. Jayaraman said a lack of reports of cash tips from workers and employers, especially in smaller businesses, contributed to the problem.

“That was really an eye-opener for many employees and employers. It was a moment when many employees realized that – wait a minute – if the state tells me that I have earned too little to get benefits, then maybe I have earned too little, “said Jayaraman.

RELATED: These 20 states will raise their minimum wages through January 1st

Food service workers surveyed by One Fair Wage have reported a 50% decrease in tips, an increase in customer hostile behavior in response to staff enforcement of coronavirus safety protocols, and an increase in unsolicited sexual comments since the pandemic began Customers, said Jayaraman.

One Fair Wage created an emergency fund to assist workers with tips, raised over $ 23 million and received nearly 230,000 claims, Jayaraman said.

“In these moments of depression and recession in America, mutual aid is emerging, but it will not cover it,” she said, adding that a democratically controlled Senate should enforce and pass the wage increase law. The move, which was passed in the House of Representatives in July 2019, would gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $ 15 by 2025 and remove the subordinate minimum wage for workers with tips.

President-elect Joe Biden campaigned for the promise to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, and during a speech on Friday introducing members of his economic and work team, he expressed hope that the Democratic Control of the House and Senate would “rise” the likelihood of immediate action to increase the minimum wage. “

“Nobody should work like millions do 40 hours a week on a job today and still live below the poverty line,” said Biden. “You are entitled to a minimum wage of at least $ 15 an hour.”