Political surprises just keep coming for restaurants in the run-up to the November elections.
Start with the self-damaging appearance in Congress last week of One Fair Wage’s president, Saru Jayaraman, according to the co-hosts of the Working Lunch political affairs podcast. In this week’s edition, Joe Kefauver and Franklin Coley note that the usually polished Jayaraman, whose brilliance at a microphone has definitely worked against the industry, came across as high-handed and disrespectful to the congressmen participating in the hearing.
“I do not think it was her finest hour,” commented Kefauver, who runs the Orlando government-affairs shop Align Public Strategies in partnership with Coley.
The focus of the hearings was the future of the tip credit, the employer concession that allows restaurateurs to count server’s and bartender’s tips as a portion of the pay the workers are due by law. Jayaraman has been making the case for years that the practice should be disallowed because it’s detrimental to tipped workers and fosters ill-treatment of female servers; the women can’t shut down an abusive customer because they’ll lose their tips.
At the very least, the labor advocate typically presents her argument forcefully. Her contention is often pointed, if not an outright attack on the industry’s employers.
“She was intense and aggressive, as she usually was, but against members, essentially insulting them and throwing aside decorum,” said Coley, noting that the Yale-trained lawyer even spoke over the committee’s acting chair several times. “That could come back to haunt One Fair Wage.”
He suggested that members of the committee were not likely to forget Jayaraman’s disrespect if Congress should pursue a phase-out of the tip credit, as Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has promised to make a priority if she’s elected.
But that wasn’t the only head-turning development on the political front last week, the co-hosts agreed. Coley recounted how Harris’ rival, Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, stunned political pundits by promising to end the taxation of overtime pay and cap the interest rate on credit card debts at 10%.
Feasibility aside, the pledges are likely to curry favor across a broad swath of the population, the duo agree.
“It was a big week, Joe,” remarked Coley.
For a deeper understanding of what the campaigning and Congressional hearings signal for restaurants, hit Play.
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