ROC United (Restaurant Opportunities Centers), launched in 2009, is campaigning to Raise the Tipped Minimum Wage, using the hashtag #livingofftips and featuring this video including Gloria Steinem:
From ROC’s website:
With more than 10 million workers, the restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy; it is also the lowest-paying. Six of the ten lowest-paying jobs in the United States are restaurant jobs, and seventy percent of tipped restaurant workers are women. While the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, the minimum for workers who receive tips is just $2.13. Tips are supposed to make up the difference, but in reality they don’t. When your only hourly guaranteed wage is $2.13, you live off tips. Many of the women who put food on our tables cannot afford to feed their families. Servers use food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce, and are three times as likely to live in poverty.