Nowhere in the country can you rent a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment while living on federal minimum wage, which still sits at an abysmal $7.25 an hour. Here in San Francisco, where the minimum wage is now set at $18.02 an hour, it still falls short of what experts believe is a “living wage.” That figure is around $26.00 — nearly $8 higher than San Francisco’s minimum wage.
Two years ago, workers and wage activists congregated outside the now-late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office at 1 Post Street to demand “dignified wages,” in addition to a then-relevant “fair and just” stimulus package amid Covid-19 economic recovery on the federal level. And the sentiments expressed on that February afternoon in 2021 still, unfortunately, ring true many, many months later.
Between 2016 and 2018, about 18.1% of California’s population lived below the poverty line, a figure exacerbated by the pandemic.
“California is the fifth-largest economy, not just in the country, but the world,” one demonstrator said, the sunlight slicing the sidewalk. “We can’t let [government officials and the über-rich] take advantage of us, especially now that we’re considered essential workers.”
The demonstration that Monday afternoon was a part of the weekly Moral Mondays Program — an initiative designed to spotlight social injustice issues that the Biden-Harris administration should address ASAP — put on by Poor People’s Campaign, an anti-poverty group.
Essential workers across the country held socially distanced rallies, which was at the time responsible from a public health standpoint — the vast majority of those who attended the San Francisco iteration were also double-masked — in support of the Raise the Wage Act, a piece of federal legislation that aims to end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Activists consider sub-minimum wages for tipped workers to be a continued source of oppression.
Amid the pandemic, the injustices that minimum wage workers face put them at elevated risk of contracting Covid-19.
“I’ve had people take off their masks and verbally assault me, putting my life and others at risk,” says Olivia*, a McDonald’s employee in San Francisco whose speech was later translated from Spanish to English by an on-site translator. “Covid-19 has spread throughout our workplaces and then into our homes.”
Olivia described that because of the nature of how fast-food chains operate, social distancing protocols are sometimes ignored to keep up with demand. Like other minimum-wage workers, she has often needed to put in 50, 60, and even close to 70 working hours during any given week just to make ends meet. This constant hustling to survive takes emotional and physical tolls on workers. Should they fall ill or become injured, most can’t afford quality health care or must resort to company-partnered medical centers to address their needs.
As bars and restaurants — a segment of the hospitality industry that often employs marginalized workers — continue to reel from the pandemic, so are the people who make them run.
Yuka Loroi, who, along with her husband, owns the Outer Richmond District restaurant Cassava, had been paying her employees a base hourly wage of $17 plus tips since it opened in 2012. Workers at the eatery have seen their tip earnings dry up since the pandemic began, driving their average hourly earnings to around $20 — again, far less than a minimum living wage in San Francisco.
During the 2021 protest, Loroi called for people to “remember to support” the industry and workers who make it up when purchasing meals from eateries, bars, and so on.
Activists on site agreed that there’s no excuse to have this population size living in poverty. Some 40% of Americans are just a medical emergency or missed paycheck away from financial destitution.
Read more about the Raise the Wage Act, which is still being amended and has yet to pass in Congress. Tip hospitality workers with abandon. Protesters agreed that a federally mandated $15 per hour base wage for workers is just a start — San Francisco should adopt an even higher one.
But we’ve got to draw the starting line somewhere.
