(NEW YORK) — Carrie Schweitzer has been a waitress since she was 12.
Now 50, she said back then employers didn’t check, so she lied and told them she was 17.
“I was 13 years old the very first time I had my backside pinched to get an extra tip,” Schweitzer told ABC News.
She’s been in the service industry most of her life, and most of her life the federal minimum wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 an hour. Where Schweitzer works now, in Philadelphia, she gets $2.83 an hour, still far below the $7.25 an hour mandated for other jobs. If she doesn’t earn the base minimum wage through tips, restaurants are legally mandated to pay the rest — although some do not.
In fact, the Labor Department did a two-year investigation of 9,000 restaurants nationwide and found that 84% of restaurants committed some type of violation. But one in nine restaurants violated the law by specifically committing a tipping infraction.
“If I was able to get a full-time wage, I would not have to jump through hoops and do embarrassing things for a tip,” Schweitzer said. “I wouldn’t have to put up with a man calling me ‘baby doll’ or ‘baby girl.'”
“But I’m a waitress,” she added, “so I’m there to be harassed.”
Like over four million Americans, Schweitzer earns most of her income from tips. But despite working more than 40 hours a week, her salary is low enough to qualify for food stamps and state-provided health insurance.
“Working full time and having to accept welfare makes me feel like I’m an unappreciated person,” she said. “There is no excuse for a woman — her entire lifetime — having to put up with verbal abuse and having to put up with sexual abuse just to get a tip to make a living.”
It’s a big reason why she’s pushing for a $15 minimum wage and ending the currently accepted subminimum wage offered to tipped workers.
The Fight for $15, a movement dedicated to raising the federal minimum wage, was a key talking point during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
But in the months since Democrats have gained control of Washington, their attempts to raise the minimum wage have sputtered. Attempts to include a minimum-wage hike in the COVID relief package failed. The Biden administration did what it could, raising the minimum wage for federal workers to $15 an hour.
“The minimum wage itself is woefully inadequate,” Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., told ABC News. “There’s no county in the United States where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.”
Scott, who introduced the Raise the Wage bill in the House, also emphasized that it would eliminate the subminimum wage.
“So the idea,” he said, “is to have everybody make at least the minimum wage as their base salary — and if they make tips over and above that, that’s fine.”
While some Republicans believe the minimum wage should gradually increase over time, others have said they fear that raising it could lead to job loss, higher prices or force small businesses to close.
But in 30 states and the District of Columbia, lawmakers have stepped in and passed a minimum wage above the $7.25 federal mandate.
When it comes to restaurants, though, margins are already slim and overhead costs are high.
At Virtue, an upscale Southern restaurant in Chicago, Erick Williams said that most of his waitstaff can make at least $50,000 a year.
Recently, the city of Chicago raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour and its subminimum wage to $9 an hour, the latter a win for restauranteurs like Williams.
“No business can sustain higher costs and lower profitability and remain in business,” he told ABC News.
But he also acknowledged that the current policy won’t solve the issues facing so many Americans like Schweitzer and more needs to be done.
“I imagine we would identify restaurants that are not bad actors, that are not earning their wages on the backs of their servers and allowing women to be subjected to abuse at tables,” he said. “I think those are the ones that need to be regulated differently.”
As the Fight for $15 continues, Scott told ABC News that debate on the House floor isn’t over and that Republicans still haven’t offered any concrete alternatives.
“They didn’t offer any,” said Scott, adding that they perhaps could “support something less, and then maybe we can negotiate something in the middle. But we haven’t — they haven’t — passed anything yet.”
Meanwhile, Schweitzer will continue working full time and receiving government assistance just to make ends meet.
“When I hear a lawmaker say that he does not want to raise the minimum wage,” Schweitzer said, “he is telling me he does not care about 50% of America. That’s it. He does not care about us.”
(NEW YORK) — Thursday marked a major pandemic milestone — air travel exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time as people took to the skies for the July 4th holiday.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported it screened 2,147,090 nationwide Thursday, surpassing the checkpoint volume for the same day in 2019 by 58,330.
It’s a remarkable recovery from the height of the pandemic when fewer than 100,000 people were flying in the U.S. each day.
Experts predict airlines will carry the most passengers since the start of the pandemic this weekend.
Domestic destinations like Las Vegas, Miami and Orlando are the most popular, according to the travel booking site Hopper. The Caribbean and Mexico are the most popular international destinations, according to Hopper economist Adit Damodarn.
“July 4th is the most searched weekend of summer 2021 thus far,” Damodarn said.
American Airlines is operating nearly 5,500 daily flights between Thursday and Monday, with the busiest travel days being Thursday and Friday, a spokesperson said.
United Airlines expects to fly 2 million customers from Thursday to Tuesday, with Thursday and Monday anticipated to be its busiest days. Delta Air Lines said approximately 2.2 million customers are expected to fly with the airline between Friday and Tuesday.
The busiest airports will be Chicago O’Hare, LAX, and Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, according to Hopper. The busiest day to depart is Friday and the busiest day to return will be Monday.
“Travel is back,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told ABC News.
“July 1 is going to be the busiest day since COVID started, but it’ll only have that record for four days because July 5 is going to break it. It’s just another indication of how we really are on the road to recovery,” Kirby said.
TSA warned of staffing shortages at more than 100 airports last month and continues to ask for volunteers to help meet demand.
“Because of the fact that you know there are shortage and staffing, you know they’re going to be long lines, just be patient,” Everett Kelley, president of AFGE, the union that represents Transportation Security Officers, told ABC.
TSA has said it hopes to hire 6,000 new officers to handle the summer travel boost.
It has resorted to offering recruitment incentives such as $1,000 to officers who accept employment with the agency.
They say they are prepared to handle the increased traveler volume this weekend.
(NEW YORK) — As Americans flock back to air travel, airlines are scrambling to retrain crew and staff airport operations positions — the job hasn’t been easy with flight cancellations piling up.
Southwest canceled 2,687 flights in June according to flight tracking site Flightaware.com. In that same period, United canceled 189, Delta 106, and American canceled 2,423.
Southwest has blamed weather and a temporary IT outage in mid-June, but documents obtained by ABC News and conversations with flight crews detail more than just weather problems.
“Southwest is facing labor shortages, from the ramp to customer service agents to our flight attendants, pilots, and a lot of those are, they’re having trouble filling,” Southwest captain and president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, Casey Murray told ABC News.
American has explained its recent problems citing staffing shortages, telling customers to expect up to 80 cancellations a day through July 15.
Besides cancellations, Southwest also saw 34,250 delayed flights in June, significantly higher than United which saw just 8,440 delayed flights during the same period. Delta delayed 11,057 flights in June, while American Airlines delayed 20,418, according to FlightAware.
Southwest flight attendant and union president Lyn Montgomery has been flying for Southwest for 29 years, and says this is the worst she’s ever seen.
“It’s the lowest morale we’ve ever seen. We are normally a pretty happy workforce who work for Southwest Airlines and have always taken pride in that, but right now morale is at the lowest it’s ever been,” Montgomery told ABC News.
As Americans began to travel for Father’s Day weekend, more than 20% of Southwest flight attendants called in sick, according to internal documents obtained by ABC News. Many of those sick calls were due to fatigue, according to Montgomery.
The airline is now offering flight crews up to double pay to pick up open shifts through July 7, the airline acknowledged.
On Thursday, Southwest had scheduled 3,445 flights scheduled but canceled 212 of them.
In a statement to ABC News Southwest said: “Our People are expert problem solvers persevering with fewer options available to them right now as we deal with a combination of disruptive weather, very full flights, and a flight schedule built for nonstop, point-to-point travel. We’re aware of the frustration this disruption is having on our Employees and Customers. We apologize and we are dedicated to doing better.”
Captain Murray said as more pilots come out of training, cancellations should subside. Southwest does have new flight attendants in training as well, but airline training programs take weeks to months before new hires work their first shifts.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. employers added 850,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, the latest figures released Friday by the Labor Department show, exceeding economists’ expectations.
Economists had expected to see more than 700,000 jobs added in June, a jump from the revised 583,000 added in May.
The biggest increases in employment last month occurred in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, professional and business services, retail trade, and other services, according to the Labor Department.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked up slightly from 5.8% in May to 5.9% in June.
(NEW YORK) — Amid the coronavirus pandemic, another health crisis has been lurking.
It affects people of all backgrounds and in some cases can have profound impacts on their health.
Burnout in the American workforce, which surveys indicate was a widespread problem even before the pandemic, is an issue that employers and managers can no longer afford to ignore as many companies contemplate return-to-office strategies and the future of work in general.
“This is a historic time; we’ve never been through anything like this. Our mental health and our physical health are really being taxed,” Darcy Gruttadaro, the director of the American Psychological Association Foundation’s Center for Workplace Mental Health, told ABC News. “If there was ever a time to raise these issues, it’s now.”
“If you’re experiencing burnout and you’re trying to ignore it, that will eventually catch up with you,” Gruttadaro warned.
Burnout is also killing people, new data indicates. Last month, the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization said that working long hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000. In a statement accompanying the study, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus linked the COVID-19 pandemic to “blurring the boundaries between home and work,” which resulted in longer hours for many — and thus a higher risk of premature death.
And if that isn’t enough for business leaders to take action, experts note that burnout is also linked to plummeting productivity, poor retention and other factors that can impact a company’s bottom line.
Data shows that pandemic-battered workers are now leaving their jobs at some of the highest rates ever. The share of workers who left their jobs in April was 2.7%, marking the highest “quits rate” since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records, according to data released by the agency earlier this month.
Here is what experts say defines burnout, why it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic, and what can be done to address it:
What burnout is and why it’s been magnified by the pandemic
While the term has been used colloquially for decades, the World Health Organization used three factors — energy depletion or exhaustion, distance or cynicism to one’s job and reduced professional efficacy — to define burnout as an occupational phenomenon for the first time in 2019. It is not classified as a medical condition.
“Burnout is when an individual is experiencing high levels of stress — and usually a person becomes cynical and kind of distant from their job. They just really are not feeling good about their job at all,” Gruttadaro said. “And then the third big area is their efficiency or their ability to perform their job really drops.”
It does not just have to do with workload, however, but also whether there is a sense of fairness in the workplace and the amount of control workers have over their tasks. While the self-help industry and employers may place the blame on the individual, experts say it usually has more to do with the workplace than a specific employee.
High levels of stress associated with burnout can manifest in people experiencing depression, anxiety, substance use, heart disease, obesity and a number of other illnesses, according to Gruttadaro.
Reports of depression and anxiety amid the pandemic have spiked significantly, she added, and overdose deaths have also soared — likely showing that many are turning to substance use in high numbers.
The pandemic has been linked to higher rates of burnout for both essential workers and white-collar office workers, many of whom had the privilege of continuing their jobs remotely.
For essential workers, the pandemic brought a myriad of new and chronic stressors related to trying to stay healthy and safe while working on site or getting to and from work, as well as many new restrictions and changes outside of their control at work.
For those who have been working remotely, many reported working longer hours — marked by days spent eating lunch at their desks or working through the time they would have spent commuting. As a shift to remote work blurred the boundaries between being on and off the clock, some data indicates work productivity actually ticked up during the health crisis.
New caregiving responsibilities as schools and day cares shuttered throughout the past year also disproportionately impacted mothers, leading to an alarming exodus of women in the workforce — many of whom cited “burnout” as the reason for leaving or downshifting their careers, one study found.
“Burnout is essentially saying there’s something not healthy, or not fair, in a lot of different places,” Christina Maslach, a professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and a core researcher at the school’s Healthy Workplaces Center, told ABC News.
Maslach noted a feeling of unfairness — in pay, treatment and work assignments — within the workplace is especially linked to burnout.
That sense of unfairness can lead to negative feelings and cynicism toward your work, which often means “that people, in trying to cope with that, are doing the bare minimum rather than their very best,” Maslach added.
Maslach pioneered research on burnout, creating the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a research measure that was a key contributor to the WHO’s later work on burnout.
While there is a common fallacy that burnout and stress is a personal weakness or flaw, Maslach said it usually has to do with an unhealthy work environment rather than an individual not being able to take care of themself.
“It’s rarely something that affects an individual alone; it’s not just about workload,” she added. “It’s about how much control that you have and it’s also affected by the extent to which you get recognized and rewarded for doing good things as opposed to ‘a good day is a day when nothing bad happens.'”
What can be done to address burnout
Maslach warned that many of the solutions to burnout touted by the self-care industry and beyond deal more with coping rather than prevention, and sustainable solutions would require overhauls that tend to be very job-specific but address the root causes of what makes a workplace stressful and exhausting.
“It’s analogous to the canary in the coal mine,” Maslach said. “When the canary goes down in the coal mine and is having trouble breathing, and not surviving and not doing well, you don’t worry about how to make the canary stronger and tougher; you say what’s going wrong in the mine? Why are the fumes getting so toxic that a community can’t survive?”
Gruttadaro said that one thing employers can certainly do, however, is recognize that leadership matters with regards to burnout.
“Leadership sets the culture and organization,” she said, which is why it is so critical to make sure that “managers and leaders are modeling good behavior and not sending emails very late at night, not sending weekend emails all the time.”
Effective communication between managers and workers is also key, Gruttadaro said, such as having check-ins where workers can feel comfortable voicing their concerns to their managers and not just through human resources departments.
Microsoft’s annual 2021 Work Trend Index report warned that business leaders are “out of touch with employees and need a wake-up call.” The report found high levels of overwork and exhaustion among employees, but a major disconnect compared to managers. Some 61% of business leaders say they are “thriving” — 23 percentage points higher than those without decision-making authority.
At the individual level, Gruttadaro recommended doing what you can control — such as “setting healthy boundaries” — and if you’re working remotely to try and mimic the hours you would do if you were still going into the office.
When it comes specifically to dealing with stress management, Gruttadaro emphasized that exercise and sleep are essential, as well as engaging with activities that you enjoy.
“There are likely to be higher incidence of burnout at jobs in which people don’t have as much control over the activities they do during the day as part of their job,” Gruttadaro added. “So the more that employers offer opportunities for people to find meaning and purpose in their work, and really feel like they’re making a difference and they have some control and there’s a certain level of fairness associated with the way they’re treated during the day — these are all elements of a healthier work environment.”
Some companies, including Bumble, LinkedIn, and Hootsuite, have responded to post-pandemic burnout recently by giving all staff an entire week off.
Maslach added that the present time provides the ideal opportunity for organizations to get creative with solutions that aren’t just treating the symptoms of burnout but creating a work environment that people actually want to be a part of.
“The changes in the pandemic I think underscored an important bottom line, which is the importance of a healthy workplace,” she said. “We have to rethink what makes for healthier environments in which people can do productive, meaningful and valuable kind of work.”
“And if anything, the pandemic is pointing out you could do things differently,” Maslach said. “Let’s get creative, let’s rethink this.”
“It may not be the ‘same old, same old’ going back to normal workplaces,” she said. “How do we learn from this and figure out better ways of doing what we do?”
(NEW YORK) — Guests visiting Disney Parks in recent days might have noticed being greeted a little differently when waiting for a performance or show.
As a step towards inclusivity, Disney Parks has announced it’s removing the mention of, “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” from its automated announcements, including for the nighttime shows.
This change is one of many ways Disney is working to promote a more inclusive experience for all guests and families.
Changes to Disney’s language have already begun to roll out and will continue to change across Disney Parks globally.
“We want our guests to see their own backgrounds and traditions reflected in the stories, experiences and products they encounter in their interactions with Disney,” Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Josh D’Amaro recently said in a statement.
“Inclusion is essential to our culture and leads us forward as we continue to realize our rich legacy of engaging storytelling, exceptional service, and Disney magic,” D’Amaro added.
(NEW YORK) — Chanel No. 5 lovers can now bathe themselves in the iconic scent — literally.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of Chanel No. 5, the brand has launched a collection of bath products.
“To celebrate No. 5 and its one hundred years of celebrity, CHANEL has developed CHANEL FACTORY 5, a revolutionary experience that has made it possible to produce a completely new collection, with No. 5 as its sole ingredient,” the company wrote in a press release.
Chanel Factory 5 includes 17 limited-edition products from soap to body lotion.
All products in the collection include the signature rose and jasmine No. 5 scent.
“Through this concept, we want to return to the creation process of the first N°5 packaging. At the time, it was a simple laboratory bottle, a functional object that became luxurious and iconic. There was already this notion of transforming a common, ultra-functional object into a precious one,” Thomas Du Pré De Saint Maur, head of global creative resources for fragrance and beauty, said in a statement.
The line is available on Chanel’s website and ranges from $45 to $138.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Bumble will be opening its first-ever café and wine bar in New York City this summer.
A partnership between the dating app and restaurant Pasquale Jones of Delicious Hospitality Group, Bumble Brew Café and Wine Bar will open in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood on July 24. According to a statement by Bumble, it’ll be a space for “the community to gather, for genuine connections to be built, and for guests to interact.”
“At Bumble, we’re fueled by bringing people together to build genuine connections — both on and off the app,” said Julia Smith, head of brand partnerships at Bumble. “We hope that people can gather at Bumble Brew and connect over an espresso or delicious meal, whether it’s with friends, a potential partner, or a new business connection.”
Designed by FLOAT Studio, the 3,760-square-foot restaurant will have an 80-seat dining room, a cocktail bar, and patio and private dining. The Italian-inspired menu was created by chef Ryan Hardy, and will feature vegetables, handmade pasta and shareable plates.
“We’re thrilled to join forces with Bumble and open a new space in our community, especially after this challenging year,” said Hardy. “We’ve always designed our restaurants so that people can connect over delicious food and drinks in a fun and energetic environment, so our mission aligned perfectly with Bumble.”
In line with how Bumble lets women make the first move with messaging on the app, the music will be mostly comprised of women artists.
The idea to open up a permanent location was inspired by the success of the Bumble Hive pop-ups, which act as a physical embodiment of the app where visitors can meet new people while enjoying food and entertainment.
“We’ve seen a resounding response to the Bumble Hive pop-ups we’ve hosted around the world and noticed a clear appetite for a permanent space where people could connect,” Smith said.
Bumble Brew will initially be open for breakfast Wednesday through Sunday, from 8 a.m. to noon. It’ll expand its hours to include lunch service on July 31 and dinner on Aug. 7.
(NEW YORK) — Richard Branson announced Thursday he will be joining the crew of his next spaceflight with Virgin Galactic, besting fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to space.
The first fully crewed spaceflight for SpaceShipTwo Unity will take place July 11, pending weather and technical checks.
Branson, 70, will join the crew to “evaluate the private astronaut experience and will undergo the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts,” according to a press release. Branson announced last week that Virgin Galactic was given the OK by the Federal Aviation Administration to launch customers into space.
“I truly believe that space belongs to all of us,” Branson said in a statement. “After 17 years of research, engineering and innovation, the new commercial space industry is poised to open the universe to humankind and change the world for good. It’s one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; it’s another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality.”
The mission, dubbed Unity 22, will be a 20-second test flight for VSS Unity. It’s the company’s fourth crewed spaceflight. Unity’s pilots will be Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, both of whom have flown Unity previously.
Unity is launched from a separate “mothership” aircraft called VMS Eve.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is expected to join the crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft’s first flight on July 20.
Bezos announced on Wednesday that accompanying him, and his brother, on New Shepard will be pioneering female pilot Wally Funk.
Joining Branson on his flight will be Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, the company’s lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, the company’s vice president of government affairs and research operations. Moses was also on the ship’s first test flight.
The British-born Branson founded Virgin Group in the 1970s and has delved into everything from music to cellphones and airlines.
Branson will turn 71 exactly one week after the flight.
ABC News’ Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced Thursday that some 130 countries have agreed to a new 15% global minimum tax rate for corporations.
Yellen called it a “historic day for economic diplomacy” in a statement, adding that Biden “has spoken about a ‘foreign policy for the middle class,’ and today’s agreement is what that looks like in practice.”
While the agreement was signed by finance ministers from all of the Group of 20 nations and some 130 in total, representing more than 90% of global GDP, it still needs to make it through the legislative bodies of each country — meaning it’s far from a done deal.
Still, the news represents one of the biggest potential reforms in international tax policy in decades. Here is what to know about a global minimum tax rate and how it is expected to impact U.S. businesses and workers.
What is a global minimum tax rate?
A global minimum tax rate is the minimum amount large, international corporations have to pay. The aim is to prevent companies from dodging tax payments by relocating operations or headquarters to another nation with lower rates.
In the U.S., the corporate tax rate is 21% due to former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were implemented in an attempt to keep businesses from fleeing to nations with lower rates. Biden has proposed raising it to 28%.
Ireland, meanwhile, has a corporate tax rate of just 12.5% as part of its own bid to attract business, often at the expense of other European Union nations. Ireland was not listed among the 130 signatories of Thursday’s agreement that was arranged by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Why a global minimum tax rate?
The OECD estimates that some $240 billion is lost annually to tax avoidance by multinational companies.
Biden said a minimum rate would help prevent companies from exploiting loopholes, with Yellen noting the additional funds collected could be used to help the middle class in areas including education.
“Multinational corporations will no longer be able to pit countries against one another in a bid to push tax rates down and protect their profits at the expense of public revenue,” the president said in a statement Thursday. “They will no longer be able to avoid paying their fair share by hiding profits generated in the United States, or any other country, in lower-tax jurisdictions.”
Yellen said in a separate statement that the “global race to the bottom” as nations compete to lower their tax rates has “deprived countries of funding for important investments like infrastructure, education, and efforts to combat the pandemic.”
Enforcing a 15% minimum tax rate among nations who agree to the plan could generate $150 billion in additional revenue, according to OECD estimates. Moreover, the agreement would provide additional benefits through ensuring stability and certainty for taxpayers and governments.
Advocates, especially in the private sector, have argued that tax competition is beneficial to overall economic growth. The head of the OECD said setting a floor on tax rates doesn’t eliminate competition.
“This package does not eliminate tax competition, as it should not, but it does set multilaterally agreed limitations on it,” Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in a statement. “It also accommodates the various interests across the negotiating table, including those of small economies and developing jurisdictions.”
When would this happen?
Further details on the plan are expected to be hammered out at the G-20 summit in October, with participating nations targeting 2023 for implementation.
“It is in everyone’s interest that we reach a final agreement among all Inclusive Framework Members [139 countries] as scheduled later this year,” Cormann said.
Could this lead to further tax reform?
America’s labyrinthine tax codes have recently come under scrutiny after a ProPublica report in June unveiled how some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals avoid paying taxes on their wealth gains using entirely legal accounting maneuvers.
Although a separate issue, Biden and Yellen signaled that domestic tax reform could be next.
“We have a chance now to build a global and domestic tax system that lets American workers and businesses compete and win in the world economy,” Yellen stated.
Biden, meanwhile, called on lawmakers to implement his tax plan that, among other things, raises corporate rates to 28%.
“Building on this agreement will also require us to take action here at home,” Biden stated. “It’s imperative that we reform our own corporate tax laws, as I proposed in my Made in America tax plan.”
