One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America

The federal tipped minimum wage since 1991 (yes, that is thirty years) has been $2.13. Prior to COVID, six million people that we are aware of worked off this system, meaning when the pandemic hit, tons of them lost their jobs and the varied security that came with them. In Jayaraman’s newest book, she “shines a light on these workers, illustrating how the people left out of the fight for a fair minimum wage are society’s most marginalized: people of color, many of them immigrants; women, who form the majority of tipped workers; disabled workers; incarcerated workers; and youth workers.” Jayaraman is the director of the Food Labor Research Center at U-C Berkeley.