Flinging caramel lattes for travelers in a hurry is hardly a lucrative career, but even less if you’re not white.
Retail workers at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport claim the average hourly wage for black baristas was $ 1.85 lower than their white counterparts, according to a 2019 payroll survey. Black restaurant workers there earn about $ 18,973 each year. Dollars, including tips. compared to $ 28,513 for white workers. After the coronavirus pandemic began, annual wages for white workers fell to $ 16,215 and even less for people of color, the union said.
Unite Here Local 11 is now pressing for an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into systematic racial disparities in the hiring, promotion and remuneration of employees at airport concessionaire HMS Host in Phoenix.
Both the company and the union agree that there is a pay gap, but the reason for this is that they differ.
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HMS Host, which runs a dozen or so stores from Starbucks to Blanco Tacos & Tequila, claims that the reason people of color make less is because of seniority. The company claims the union anchored such racial differences when it signed a collective agreement that made wages dependent on length of service.
Unite Here workers in Phoenix have been on strike over wages and benefits since before the busy Thanksgiving holiday.
Some Sky Harbor restaurants closed when workers left their jobs.
Katya Schwenk
The union is betting that Patricia Miner, the chief investigator for the supervisory authority in the Phoenix EEOC office, will open a commissioner charge, a special type of investigation.
The union claims that white workers are almost ten times more likely than black workers to be bartenders and waiters, but also constitute the majority of management. And that a black man was prevented from working outside a restaurant and instead banished to the back of the house until the union filed a complaint on his behalf.
HMS Host denies the union’s claims of racial discrimination in the workplace, finding that more than 85 percent of its workers are still at work despite the strike.
The company claims its offerings start at $ 15 an hour, including health insurance that covers 90 percent of employee costs for $ 13 a week.
“HMSHost also denies unfounded claims of racial discrimination in wages,” a company statement said. “These wages are set by the collective agreement agreed between HMSHost and the union itself.”
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