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Speaking Of Baby Jesus, Let’s Discuss Holiday Tipping

This is the time of year when I try to remind patrons of restaurants and coffee shops to tip generously, in the spirt of the season. I want us to tip well all year long, of course, but December can pack a special wallop of motivation for people whipping out their charge cards in celebration of the Christ Child.

Or so I want to believe.

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Tackling Tip Theft

Tackling Tip Theft

Whenever young journalists ask how to write stories that can change lives, I suggest they start asking about tipping policies whenever they see a tip jar or valet, or visit a restaurant.

No matter what city in the U.S. they call home, it’s only a matter of time before such questions unearth a story of injustice that will outrage the public and likely change the daily lives of fellow humans who make their living waiting on the rest of us.

For more than 10 years, I’ve been writing about tipping practices that punish employees who, by law, already make an abysmal hourly wage.

Some employers and supervisors seem never to run out of ways to cheat hardworking men — and mostly women — who spend entire workdays on their feet trying to please strangers.

Bosses, for example, may skim or keep the entire contents of tip jars, which I first discovered in 2004. They also may deduct a credit-card service charge from tips not left in cash. Sometimes, they violate federal labor law and force servers to pay unpaid checks left by scurrying customers.

As I’ve learned in my years of reporting, there are essentially two ways to change these dishonorable practices. One way is to call them out, one reported incident at a time, thus alerting a public willing to wield the force of their wallets. The other way, which is far more effective, is to pass laws to protect the rights of these hourly wage earners whose desire to stay employed and support their families renders them defenseless.

In Rhode Island, state representative Aaron Regunberg is trying to legislate what some restaurant owners will do only when it is demanded of them. His bill, co-sponsored in the state senate by Gayle Goldin, would elevate the daily lives of those who work in the food service industry by raising the minimum wage and eliminating tip theft.

His bill would incrementally raise tipped workers’ wages until, by 2020, they would be comparable to the state’s regular minimum wage. Imagine that. Still not a living wage, perhaps, but at least they would no longer be forced to depend on tips to make even the minimum.

The bill would also end the employer practice of deducting credit-card service fees from tips. It would restrict the use of pooled tips. And it would require that employees receive the total amount of the tips and those deceptively tagged “service charges,” which customers too often mistakenly assume to mean “tips.”

Regunberg is a former community organizer who is young enough and engaged enough to still name many of the people he is trying to help.

“I’ve heard about these restaurant practices from constituents, but also from friends who work in the service industry,” he said in a phone interview. “The restaurant industry is well organized and opposed to this, but what I’m hoping to do, through hearings, is voices of actual workers so their stories will be heard and shared.”

A coalition of groups in Rhode Island has coalesced in support of the bill. Among them: organized labor, the NAACP Providence Branch, Planned Parenthood, Fuerza Laboral, Farm Fresh Rhode Island and the Bell Street Chapel. The unifying theme is apparent. All of these groups, and others who have signed on, champion people who are often invisible, even when standing right in front of us.

Some restaurant owners have criticized Regunberg’s bill as overreaching. “They say, ‘There are a few bad apples, but most of us aren’t like this.’ But if you aren’t really doing this, what is the problem with tightening the law for those who are?”

That’s the kind of talk that gets you into trouble with the people who need the talkin’ to.

Excellent.

Regunberg illustrates why we need our young leaders for these troubled times. He imagines a better world for those who aren’t as fortunate as he, and arms himself with facts and figures to dislodge the stodgy from their affection for the status quo.

“What we’re trying to do with this bill is the epitome of economic development, because we’re putting our money into the economy,” he said. “People who work at restaurants might actually be able to take their own families out to dinner.”

Until that happens, in Rhode Island and wherever you may live, I offer these reminders.

Whenever possible, please tip in cash.

If you must leave your tip on a credit card, please ask if the server, coat-check worker or valet keeps the full amount.

Every time you see a tip jar, please ask who keeps them.

And please, dear readers, whenever you find out management has the wrong answer, drop me a line at con.schultz@yahoo.com.

Change is incremental, but with you at the helm, it’s also unstoppable.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Dave Dugdale via Flickr

Marriott’s Shameful Hotel Tipping Scam

Marriott’s Shameful Hotel Tipping Scam

As an old popular song from the 1970s asks, what do you get if you “work your fingers right down to the bone?” Bony fingers.

As the hardworking housekeepers for the sprawling Marriott chain of hotels know, that’s more than a cute song lyric; it’s the truth. Mostly women, these “room attendants,” as they’re called, are paid a poverty wage of barely $8 an hour by this hugely profitable lodging conglomerate to perform a very hard, physical job. Compelled to do very heavy lifting at unsafe speeds, they suffer the highest injury rate in the so-called “hospitality” industry. Some two-thirds of them have to take pain medication just to get through their day of heaving 100-pound mattresses, stooping to clean floors and toilets and twisting to readjust furniture in 15 to 20 rooms per shift.

Yet, Marriott’s CEO publicly hails the very women he exploits as “the heart of the house,” saying his chain likes to express its appreciation to them with “special recognition events” during International Housekeepers Week. Yes, exploited room refreshers are not rewarded with a living wage, but with their very own congratulatory week — how great is that?

Marriott is the corporate domain of the Royal Marriott Dynasty. The family was a big backer of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, which so sordidly tried to divide Americans between the few noble “Makers” (like the Marriotts) and the ignoble “Takers” — i.e. workers and retirees. The chain has 4,000 hotels with 690,000 rooms in 78 countries, operating under 18 different brand names (including Ritz-Carlton, Renaissance, Gaylord, Courtyard, Fairfield Inn and Residence Inn, just to name a few). It hauled in nearly $13 billion in revenue last year.

The extravagantly rich Marriott domain is a miserly employer that fattens its large profits by holding its hard-working housekeepers down with poverty-level wages.

Now, enter Lady Maria Shriver, grandly offering a plan to boost the pay of Marriott’s 22,000 North American housekeepers. A pay raise, perhaps? Oh, tut-tut — those who run in the Shriver-Marriott circles of wealth prefer charitable gestures to straightforward populist remedies.

Instead, Shriver’s foundation has “partnered” with the far-flung hotel empire to request that its customers pay a little extra in the form of tips to supplement Marriott’s low-wage stinginess. Reducing its housekeepers to begging for alms, the corporate giant has adopted Shriver’s “nobles oblige” program (gaily titled “The Envelope, Please”) by putting an envelope in each room asking the customer to subsidize its employees’ wages. The envelope even lays a little guilt trip on customers, saying that, “The hard work (of room attendants) is many times overlooked when it comes to tipping.”

Marriott celebrated International Housekeepers Week this year by proudly announcing its “new tipping initiative” — urging Marriott’s customers “to express their gratitude by leaving tips and notes of thanks for hotel room attendants.” Shriver says she hopes the voluntary tips “will make these women feel seen and validated.” Is that sweet or what?

Does the Lady Maria at least urge that this customer subsidy of Marriott’s miserable low wages be the standard 15-20 percent tip we give at restaurants? No, one to five bucks per night’s stay is recommended. Let’s see, at about $250 a day for a Marriott room, even a $5 tip is a sad 2 percent expression of “gratitude.” As for customers leaving a little thank-you note, imagine trying to buy a baloney sandwich with that.

How about this: Instead of paying $9 million a year to Marriott’s CEO, make him rely on customer notes and tips — and see how validated and appreciated he feels. Maybe that will show him that this is a disgraceful and embarrassing exercise of corporate feudalism. Come on, Marriott — stop playing Lord of the Manor and just pay a decent wage!

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: LA Wad via Flickr

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The Envelope, Please — And A Living Wage, Too

The Envelope, Please — And A Living Wage, Too

After a self-congratulatory rollout to rival the ruckus of God’s six days of Earth-making, Marriott International has begun leaving envelopes in hotel rooms to encourage guests to tip housekeepers the corporation refuses to pay a living wage.

“Our caring room attendants enjoyed making your stay warm and comfortable,” the envelope reads. “Please feel free to leave a gratuity to express your appreciation for their efforts.”

So cool, says Marriott’s president and CEO, Arne Sorenson.

“Marriott is proud to support The Envelope Please to shine a light on the excellent behind-the-scenes work our room attendants do day in and day out.”

Sorenson’s salary is almost $7 million.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association is all for this envelope thing, let me tell you. In a press release, it “suggests hotel guests leave $1 to $5 per night, depending on the hotel class, and recommends tipping daily rather than at checkout to ensure that it goes to the person cleaning the room.”

This is a lobbyist group “representing all segments of the 1.8 million-employee U.S. lodging industry, including hotel owners, REITs, chains, franchisees, management companies, independent properties, state hotel associations, and industry suppliers.”

Note the absence of any employees. For that, you need a union, which represents a teeny-tiny percentage of the estimated 20,000 hotel housekeepers who work in the U.S. and Canada alone.

What happens when no big lobbying group is fighting for you? As The Washington Post’s Abha Bhattarai reported, in 2012 hotel housekeepers earned a median salary in the U.S. of $19,780, or approximately $9.51 per hour.

Those are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

If that $19,780-a-year housekeeper is supporting a household of three people, she is earning below the poverty line.

That’s a statistic from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As has been widely reported and is frequently celebrated, this idea for the tip envelope came from Maria Shriver, the former journalist and California first lady who founded the nonprofit A Woman’s Nation.

Shriver, as quoted in the joint press release:

“The Envelope Please was born from having conversations with women I’ve met who have taken care of my room during hotel stays. Their stories of hard work and perseverance inspired and informed me. They told me that room attendants, who are often the primary breadwinner for their families, are often forgotten when it comes to tipping, unlike other front-of-house employees, since most travelers don’t see them face-to-face.”

I do not doubt Shriver’s good intentions. She is right. These people perform a most intimate job for strangers who couldn’t tell you the color of their eyes or how long it took them to clean up the messes they left behind. The work has only gotten harder, too, with heavier mattresses and an increasingly rude public.

However, I implore Shriver to use her considerable influence for greater good.

She has our attention now. This is the perfect time to advocate for what these housekeepers deserve: the right to join a union without employer harassment and to earn a living wage that lets them take better care of themselves and their families. How interesting that Marriott doesn’t see these tip envelopes as proof of a continued injustice.

I want to address the tiresome habit of those guests who gripe about housekeeper tips as if they were being asked to divvy up their kingdoms. “It’s not my job to supplement a company’s lousy wages,” the argument goes.

To which I say: Congratulations for stating the obvious.

OK, so it’s not our job to care. The question is: Who do we want to be as we navigate this world?

How we treat the people we’re allowed to mistreat is the measure of who we are. Most of us who can afford to sleep in a bed we won’t have to make and bathe in a bathroom we’ll never have to clean can afford to spring for at least a $5 tip each day.

On the subject of tips, here’s another: If you think your employer’s refusal to let you expense your tips absolves you of this small kindness, I recommend you never say that out loud. I’ve watched the reaction of people on the receiving end of that little declaration, and it ain’t pretty. Some things you can’t take back, and that moment will define you.

Yes, it’s wrong that hotel housekeepers must depend on us to make enough money to support their families.

Let’s do it anyway.

As is so often true in life, we can be angry that we’re expected to help or grateful that we are able.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Liz Danzico via Flickr

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