Editor’s note: This commentary is by Steve May, of Richmond, a clinical social worker who is a 2020 candidate for Democratic State Senate in Chittenden County. He is a former member of the Vermont AFL-CIO executive board, former vice president of Champlain Valley Central Labor Council and a former member of the Richmond Selectboard.
Eventually this storm will pass. And when it does, we together will be tasked with the business of putting Vermont back together again. And like before, our restaurants and bars will again become central to our civic life. These are the places where we gather as a society.
As a people, Vermonters have a keen understanding that food and beverage businesses are critical to who we are. Regardless of whether you’re talking about iconic food brands like Magic Hat Brewing, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, or Cabot Cheese, we take special pride in them because they are home grown. Their success in many cases is literally dependent on us. Our investment in these companies, through our patronage when they were first starting out paved the way for their larger successes.
Interconnectedness in this system isn’t just some vague notion, economic or otherwise. We are discussing an overall food system. We all are aware that what happens in the farm fields across our state impacts grocers and restaurant diners. As a result, the phrase “farm-to-table” has taken on real meaning in day-to-day Vermont life.
Historically, the farm-to-table discussion has focused on the welfare of Vermont farms and the agricultural economy. Lost in the larger overall conversation has been concern for the culinary workers who sustain Vermont’s hospitality industry and its infrastructure. Absent from this larger conversation has been the cooks, bartenders and barbacks, baristas, waiters and waitresses, and hostesses who make those institutions run. If this is a conversation that recognizes that we are discussing a food system in our state, then we must focus on the people who get that food to your table, and their ability to live with dignity, allowing their work to pay a decent wage.
Collectively, we spend precious little time focused on the tipped minimum wage. In Vermont, it’s half the minimum wage for all other regular employees or $5.39/hour. That’s what is paid to food service employees every day in Vermont. It’s an outrage — Vermont workers are at the peril of their next patron, their next interaction, no matter how fickle or fantastic. This is no way to make a living, it’s not fair and it’s not just.
We are in a moment where wholesale systemic changes to the restaurant and culinary sector is coming. We do not question whether this aid is appropriate or necessary — of course it is. But if we are to re-emerge from this crisis better off, we can’t do so leaving an inequitable, two-tiered system in place.
Vermont’s culinary workers are the backbone of the food service industry in our state. Their labor is critical to sustaining iconic Vermont food institutions across our state, and any plan to restart Vermont’s food and beverage system must put their needs at the center of any larger systemic change. These places are every bit the blood, sweat and muscle of the employees who make them the successful places you enjoy patronizing. Culinary workers are the very soul of the establishments that they work at; and help to make work successfully on a daily basis.
This is more than just symbolism — abolishing the tipped minimum wage is an expression of fundamental fairness as Vermonters. There is no better time to consider this change than right now as we begin to rebuild this system from the ground up. Culinary workers move foodstuffs from the state’s farms through our kitchens onto plates and into dining rooms in restaurants around Vermont. Having a two-tiered system which fails to value the work of culinary workers equitably is unacceptable. Every Vermont worker should make the minimum wage, no exceptions. In this moment, where we have the opportunity to remake the Vermont hospitality sector from top to bottom, we should begin the process of engaging wholesale systemic change for some of Vermont’s most vulnerable workers.
Carving out any exemption, where any worker makes a penny less; isn’t just bad public policy — it’s inherently unfair. Having any portion of any worker’s wages tied to the kindness of strangers is a bad idea. Multiple academic peer-reviewed studies have proven that this is a poor way to incentivize good service from employees. Counting on strangers to bail out the boss is a bad way to conduct business for anyone who values an asset like their workforce. Restaurants and other food-based establishments are critical to our economy. That said, however, it is unthinkable that we would restart our food system without creating a more equitable system for the people who actually are delivering those meals and beverages to us daily. Vermont’s culinary workers should earn what everyone else does in our state, a livable wage for every Vermont worker shouldn’t be too much to ask.