Last week, a representative of Joe’s Crab Shack announced that tipping is banned in its restaurants. It is the first major restaurant chain to do so, having implemented the ban since August. The decision made by restaurant CEO Raymond Blanchette could revolutionize the industry. In an interview with NPR, Blanchette called the practice of tipping “antiquated” and said that it fosters a hostile work environment.  What he did not detail is the systemic racism, sexism and classism that accompany the restaurant business in the form of pay inequities, owed in no small part to tipping.  

Since its conception, the practice of tipping service workers has been based on racial prejudice. The idea was borrowed from aristocratic families in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Many Americans opposed. They thought not paying employees a wage was undemocratic.  To pacify feelings of disdain toward tipping, restaurant owners and railroad tycoons fervently petitioned that tipping was a fair substitute to wages. According to an Oct. 16 New York Times article, these restaurant owners actually could not stand the idea of paying a salary to African Americans, many of whom were recently freed from slavery. They used tipping as a means to pay certain employees less based merely on race. Not until Prohibition took away from restaurants’ profit in the 1920s did the general public accept the practice, albeit as a means to counteract the loss.

Today, over 120 years later, this grisly racialized history still affects African American servers.  According to a 2014 study by Michael Lynn, a Cornell Professor and expert on tipping, “Consumers of both races discriminated against black service providers by tipping them less than white service providers.” Though the study was conducted in the South, it is not a far —  reaching claim to say that racism is endemic to tipping in some form everywhere. Even if not motivated by explicitly racist beliefs, the practice of unequal pay is unjust. Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor and Statistics found that servers are over three times as likely to experience poverty than other workers.  This is because customers are not responsible tippers. When they are a little tight on cash or just do not feel like tipping, for whatever reason, servers’ livelihoods ends up being sacrificed. 

And the inequality does not end there. In 1991, restaurant lobbyists pushed through a bill that set the minimum wage at $2.13 an hour for restaurant servers, claiming the low earnings would be offset by tips. If they are not, federal laws mandate that a servers’ combined hourly wage and tips equals the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. However, this is still highly discriminatory toward those in the food service industry seeing as the minimum wage has climbed to $15 an hour in some cities. As a result, the average hourly wage for servers, including tips, may be significantly less than that of others, including fast-food restaurant workers, according to a Oct. 2014 Huffington Post article.

Below minimum wage is also a women’s rights issue, as restaurant servers — who survive off of tips — are predominantly female. However, according to the latest income evaluations by the U.S. Census Bureau, women only make 78 cents per dollar earned by men. In this way, tipping perpetuates income inequality between males and females. For female minorities, the combination of racism and income inequality in tipping creates an even more disproportionate pay gap.  

Worse still, women in the restaurant industry represent the largest group of plaintiffs of sexual harassment in the country.  According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, female restaurant servers file 37 percent of all sexual harassment claims.

There is a simple reason why. The system of tip-earning subordinates basic rules of interaction, whereby favors are exchanged by friends in gratitude or by business partners for pay. Instead, the slogan “The customer is always right” governs service, even to the point of jeopardizing servers’ basic rights. Their pay is dependent (and not required). On the mood of the customer, forcing servers to obey every whim and demand and endure every rude comment made. If this involves sexual harassment, women are then forced to choose between a loss of dignity or a loss of income. 

I have experienced this harassment myself. While working as a host in a Southern California diner, my butt was slapped by a heavily intoxicated customer. After harassing another host, he was dragged out of the restaurant by our strongest busboy and two managers. Hoping to avoid such embarrassing altercations in the future, I asked my manager if I could exchange my company owned skirt for a larger one. He laughed at me and said, “They’re called mini-skirts for a reason. How do you think we attract customers?” Ashamed, I did not bring up the topic again.    

No one should have to experience such degradation and abuse, especially women who are underpaid. Sadly, their experience of harassment in the workplace is not an uncommon narrative.  The National Journal documented the chilling reality of sexual harassment through an interview with Nataki Rhodes, who currently works at a high end restaurant in Chicago. For her, sexual harassment has become just another part of the job. Defending her malaise, she explained that her employers are all but ambivalent towards harassment and would not help her. She further added,“Yah I’m gonna let someone feel on my butt so I can get $50, how else am I gonna get my son through school?” Eliminating tipping could empower women like Nataki to stand up to this inappropriate behavior rather than endure it in the hopes of getting tipped. Women’s rights will remain seriously compromised until servers are paid a stable base wage.  If more restaurants did ban tipping, they may not have to sacrifice profit either. First off, servers would earn more money. According to a 2013 University of California Berkely study, earnings of tipped servers increased 10 percent when the minimum wage was raised to the state level. Then, to offset the cost of paying their employees more, restaurants could simply raise menu prices, as did many restaurants that implemented the ban so far. But this will be met with pleasure by the customer, who no longer has to pay an additional tip. The good service incentivized by tips will not be lost either. When tips are replaced by high hourly wages, better servers will be hired. In fact, according to a 2014 report by the  Restaurant Opportunities Center, restaurants that offer a higher hourly wage make more profit per capita than restaurants that pay low wages. They conclude that servers that make more work harder and end up attracting more customers. It seems the ban is in the best interest of everyone.

So far, this strategy has been successfully implemented in small restaurants such as Atera, Brand 158 and nearly two-dozen others. The upscale Pittsburg bistro Bar Marco tripled its profits just two months after implementing the ban. This development, along with the ban by Joe’s, will surely build momentum for the no-tipping movement. The door is now open for the rest of the country to follow. Joe’s should be commended for its forward-thinking no tip policy.  Tipping involves a narrative of race and gender-based violence that degrades thousands of Americans and undermines the tenet of equal opportunity. It is of utmost importance that this narrative is changed, on behalf of the right to earn a living salary and on behalf of equality.