Saturday marks the end of federal unemployment benefits in Tennessee — two months earlier than originally scheduled. Conservative politicians and some business groups have suggested that workers preferred to rely on those benefits rather than go back to working at businesses like restaurants and hotels.
But hospitality workers and organizers say that’s inaccurate.
Nneka Ebbe, who had been employed at a hotel restaurant in Chattanooga just before the pandemic says, “There’s no worker shortage. There’s plenty of people who are able and willing to work.”
Hayden Smith, a Nashville hospitality worker and organizer with Restaurant Opportunities Centers Music City, echoes that, saying instead “it is a shortage of good-paying jobs with benefits with healthy working conditions.”
Paige McCay, a fellow organizer and worker says business owners have been shifting the narrative to blame workers for inadequacies in the industry.
A toxic environment
Even before the pandemic, Smith says working in the restaurant industry was a “hugely abusive system.” Multiple workers pointed to low wages, unpredictable schedules and grueling days working double shifts while constantly on their feet.
“It’s dangerous, it’s exploitative,” McCay says. “You have to accept abuse and harassment from your customers constantly.”
And for workers who rely on tips to pay their bills, that’s especially troubling. Smith says when servers are sexually harassed, there’s the same power disparity as there would be if it were a boss, but without the same means for recourse.
Gov. Bill Lee and other conservative politicians have criticized the federal unemployment benefits, characterizing them as “paying people to stay home.” That’s why he says the state is opting out of the program early, despite a federal report showing the state economy would lose out on $486 million.
Lee has also touted a state jobs database with more the 250,000 available positions. However, an analysis from Fox 17 last month showed that only 3% of the jobs paid more than $20,000 per year, which falls below the federal poverty line for a family of three.
After Saturday, those filing for unemployment can receive a maximum payment of $275 per week. More than 110,000 Tennesseans received unemployment help last week, though new initial claims have been on a downswing.
“People who are on unemployment still aren’t there because they want to be,” says McCay. She says a large component of why folks have sought employment elsewhere or not returned to hospitality is pay. “We are tired of getting treated so poorly for so little.”
When the pandemic came along, hospitality workers were furloughed and laid off in droves. And those who were able to keep their jobs were exposed to the virus at higher rates than those who were able to work from home.
Then, when businesses reopened, workers were expected to police masking among customers and ensure that guests were following protocols.
Ebbe says she found a job last fall that failed to enforce any safety precautions. Smith says the Nashville restaurant where he worked was still inherently unsafe, even though it kept tables properly distanced and obeyed capacity limits, because people were sitting maskless for long periods of time.
‘Time to gain skills’
Ebbe, McCay and Smith were all unemployed for a portion of the last year. They say that time gave lots of workers time to think about their place in the hospitality industry.
“I think having this time off did give people a while to process some of that and to see if it’s an environment that they’re willing to go back to,” says Smith. “We’ve been told our entire careers that this isn’t a ‘real job. … And so people used that time to gain skills.”
Others are unable to go back to work because they can’t get childcare.
“A lot of people who I worked with directly are now pursuing other things,” Ebbe says, “They’re not going back into the restaurant industry because it’s not worth it to them anymore.”
Ebbe herself is still working at a social club and driving for Uber to make ends meet at the moment, but says she’s now looking to pivot with her career by starting her own event-planning business and finishing her degree.
‘Even misfits deserve basic pay.’
Some people still want to go back to the industry. But Smith described what’s going on in the labor market right now as a loosely organized general strike against hospitality wages and conditions.
“Labor is a commodity like anything else, ” he says. “Right now, the price of it is higher than people have been offering to pay. And if you won’t pay what something is worth, then you don’t get it.”
Smith says he resonated with an essay written by famed chef and author Anthony Bourdain who said that the professional kitchen is “last refuge of the misfit.”
Smith says, for him, restaurants have felt like home “and they’ve used that for too long as a way to get away with labor abuses.”
“But even misfits deserve basic pay and dignity in the workplace.”
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