As businesses reopen with limited capacity, tipped workers stand to earn far less than before.

Dan Smedley / Unsplash

LaShawn White had been working full-time as a server at the American bistro Brookland’s Finest since for about six months when coronavirus hit D.C. in mid-March. On a good weeknight, she could make as much as $150 in tips on a dinner shift, and as much as $300 during Sunday brunch.

But the restaurant, and much of the city, was forced to shut down on March 16. White has been without a job since, and though she filed for unemployment, it took about two months to come through.

Now, as D.C. businesses prepare to reopen with limited capacity on Friday, White and other workers are having to make calculations about whether going back to work is worth it.

“It’s been pretty crazy, because when I think about it, we were one of the first industries to be affected in such a way like this,” says White, 23. “And it kind of makes me think about the longevity of working in a field like this, at least for the foreseeable future.”

White moved out of her home in Riverdale, Maryland, and into her mom’s place in Forestville, and has been helping take care of her 6-year-old sister while her mom, who is a nurse, is at work. And for the time being, she says, she’s largely in limbo. “I don’t really know how to plan for the future right now.”

Other locals are facing similar dilemmas, even those who have continued working. Before the pandemic, Ahmed Dajani was a server, bartender, and floor manager at Truxton Circle’s Republic Cantina.

Since the Tex-Mex eatery adapted its business model for carryout and delivery though, he’s been helping bag orders, set up drinks, and is learning to make espresso drinks for the first time.

The restaurant altered its schedule, and his hours dropped from 40 per week to roughly 20, his tips falling with them. Dajani says he would normally make $180 and $200 in tips during a shift, which accounted for 60 to 70 percent of his overall income. Now, it’s closer to $100.

In the beginning, he says customers were generally tipping more, but as the new reality of the crisis set in in, those numbers have decreased, in part, he thinks, because the experience is not the same. “It’s different just to order food online or order food in person and just pick it up and go,” he says. “There’s no service there, there’s no interaction, so maybe people don’t see any worth [in] tipping.”

Dajani says Republic Cantina has provided employees with gloves and masks, (though he often brings his own) and gave employees the option to opt out of working during the crisis, but he decided it was worth the risk. “I chose to work because I need to work,” he says.

Dajani lives in a condo in Shaw, which he owns, but with his income reduced, he’s just barely able to cover his expenses. “At the current state of things, I can survive and it’ll be okay, but I definitely can’t sustain this.”

Republic Cantina tweeted Friday that it would be among the restaurants reopening this weekend. In accordance with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Phase 1 guidelines, restaurants can serve customers on premises again — but only on patios or in outdoor seating areas with a maximum of six people per table and enforced social distancing.

Restrictions will remain in place into Phase 2, with restaurants allowed to seat customers inside at 50 percent of their usual capacity. That means tipped workers could stand to take home half of their pre-COVID income, while potentially exposing themselves to life-threatening illness.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center of D.C., a non-profit membership organization that works to improve working conditions for restaurant employees, wrote a letter to Bowser and the D.C. Council, responding to the plan.

“While most white-collar workers across the District will be encouraged to continue working from home,” the group wrote, “the ReOpen DC plan proposes to turn many of the estimated 65,000 restaurant workers overnight into a vast new tier of ‘essential workers’ forced to choose between our lives and our livelihoods, as workers in the grocery, food delivery, healthcare and other frontline sectors have already been doing, at great risk, over these past months.”

The group issued a series of demands, including paying restaurant workers who currently earn a tipped hourly wage of $4.45 the regular minimum wage during the crisis, which is $14. They also urged the mayor to mandate hazard pay of time-and-a-half at minimum and expanded access to paid sick leave, among other changes.

Bowser’s office did not respond to DCist’s request for comment on the demands.

The demands mark latest in a series of debates over the rights of D.C.’s tipped workers. ROC D.C. was a major proponent of Initiative 77, a divisive measure that would have gradually eliminated the tipped wage.

Advocates said Initiative 77 would simplify the dual minimum wage system and minimize wage theft, but it faced strong opposition from the restaurant industry, including many restaurant workers, who argued it would drive up labor costs and put restaurants out of business.

Washingtonians voted in favor of it in 2018, but the D.C. Council and the mayor repealed it later that year. As part of that move, they added provisions to launch a campaign about the rights of tipped workers and set up a tip line to report wage theft, among other additions. As of this year, nothing has come of the plans.

Zac Hoffman, the executive vice president of the D.C. Bar and Restaurant Workers Alliance, disagrees with ROC’s new demand to eliminate the tipped minimum wage. The DCBRWA also fought against the passage of Initiative 77. He points out that even if tips are lower than usual during the pandemic, the tipped minimum wage requires that employers make up the difference to get workers to the standard minimum wage of $14.

He does agree with ROC on one issue. “I don’t think that’s hazard pay is out of the question,” Hoffman says. “I think that that would be something acceptable for all front-line workers and essential workers — and now with phased reopening, hair salon workers and bar restaurant workers and anyone else that’s potentially at risk with direct human contact.” Other essential workers, including nurses and hospital staff, have made similar demands for hazard pay.

As the stakes for tipped workers continue to rise as a result of COVID-19, some believe provisions like those demanded by ROC D.C. would prove a boon to tipped workers.

“I think any added financial security makes a job like that more appealing,” says Lauren Aitken, who was working part-time at Columbia Heights diner and coffee shop The Coupe before she was temporarily laid off after the restaurant closed in March.

Still, Aitken says she’s been able to cobble together enough freelance work using her other skills, including in graphic design and social media, that she would likely work fewer hours if she returns.

Other locals, like Daniel White, a former bartender at Songbyrd Music House and Record Cafe in Adams Morgan, have taken the opportunity to pivot out of full-time service work. White was bartending two to three days a week between jobs, after leaving a role in marketing at U Street Music Hall.

He made between $150 to $300 a night at Songbyrd depending on the show, but says the close quarters and hands-on nature of the job would be enough to deter him from going back.

“You’re just interacting with a lot of people, you’re touching a lot of money,” he says. “It kind of already was a disgusting venture to start with, so you add a global pandemic on top of it, it makes it less something that I would like to be doing.”

He says with the reduced capacity guidelines in place, the cons outweigh the pros. “There’s not even a monetary carrot on the stick to make me want to go back to work if I know my tips are gonna be super reduced.” Having previously worked as a reporter, he’s turned his focus to finding freelance writing gigs.

Hoffman says he has noticed some restaurants that are reopening, including 14th Street spot Seven Reasons, are mandating deposits from customers upon reserving a table, which are then applied to the bill, or setting minimums in an effort to ensure a decent profit, and by extension, better tips.

Hoffman, who is also a bartender at Cafe Fili, says that while many many of his industry colleagues are anxious to get back to work, they are also concerned for their safety. He says restaurant owners and managers will play a big role in helping to make it a smooth transition.

“I hope that owners and operators and managers will be very forgiving and able to understand that it may not be time for [workers] to come back and not penalize them for doing that,” he says.

Some employers are trying to be more lenient. Mehdi Zorgani, the manager of Sette Osteria, which will open its Dupont Circle and 14th Street NW locations for dinner on Friday, says the restaurant has not implemented any new policies regarding tips, but he will give staff more flexibility about when they work, allowing them to get back into their routines slowly.

He will also allow for more leniency with scheduling, letting them call out when needed, in an effort to ensure their emotional and physical well-being.

The restaurant will begin service with a smaller staff than usual, Zorgani says, and “evaluate it after a week or so and see, is it worth it?”

Zorgani says it’s important for the restaurant to be understanding of the strain the pandemic has taken on everyone, including its workers. “This is definitely not just coming back to work,” he says. “This is more than that.”

Some workers appear satisfied with the precautions their employers are taking. After Washington City Paper food editor Laura Hayes retweeted a tweet from Circa Bistro on Thursday questioning whether restaurant workers feel safe returning to work, a bartender at the bistro responded.

“I love my job and can’t wait to get back to it,” the bartender, Kelly, wrote. She has been featured in a photo from Circa, holding a shaker and wearing a mask. “I am proud of the steps my company has taken to prepare for this transition and I hope all other restaurants are doing so to make sure their staff and guests are safe and ready to return.” According to the website for Circa, which is reopening three of its locations this weekend, the restaurant will be requiring employees to wear face masks, taking temperatures, and frequently disinfecting surfaces.

White, the server from Brookland’s Finest, has not heard from the restaurant about a reopening date and she, too, has been working on other plans (the restaurant did not respond to DCist’s request for comment on their reopening plans, though it said in an Instagram post Wednesday that it would not reopen its patio this weekend). She recently completed training to become a birthing doula.

White says she’d love to help the restaurant when they reopen, in part as a way of thanking them for the ways they’ve supported employees during the crisis, like gifting them groceries. But she says she also has to look out for her own financial well-being.

“I might have to get another job, or I might have to look into a completely different industry, which is kind of weird because I’ve been doing this for the last couple years,” White says. “But it’s too unstable right now.”

Filed Under: coronavirus, initiative 77, reopening,