no meals. The following cash wages were offered to chambermaids and
bathmaids in addition to lodging:
1 paid at $8 but less $9 per
least than week
3 " " 9 " " 10 " "
1 " " 10 " " 11 " "
1 " " 11 " " 12 " "
No information was obtained for pantry workers or waitresses in this
group.
The Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia, in extending its
minimum wage of $16.50 to hotel workers who were living-in, attempted to
set a money value on the board and lodging furnished by the hotel.
Because there was no way of determining its actual cost to the hotel
management, the minimum cost of room and board for a self-supporting
woman in the District of Columbia was taken. The figure used is $9 a
week for board and lodging; two-thirds or $6 for board, and one-third or
$3 for lodging.[7] $13.50 is, therefore, the minimum on which a woman
can maintain herself while living-in in a hotel but taking her meals
outside. None of the hotels in New York State, furnishing lodging in
addition to a cash wage, paid this minimum.
Footnote 7:
Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia. Wages of Women in
Hotels and Restaurants in the District of Columbia. P. 16.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Wages including three meals and no lodging]
In 8 hotels which paid the workers their wage, plus three meals a day,
the following cash wages were paid to chambermaids and bathmaids:
1 paid at $6 but less $7 per
least than week
0 " " 7 " " 8 " "
1 " " 8 " " 9 " "
5 " " 9 " " 10 " "
1[8] " " 10 " " 11 " "
Footnote 8:
The actual wage paid in this group was $10.00.
No information was obtained for pantry workers or waitresses in this
group.
If the $16.50 minimum wage of the District of Columbia is taken, and $6
to cover the cost of three meals deducted, the minimum wage for this
group would be $10.50. In no case was this amount received.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Wages including board and lodging]
The largest New York City hotels and the largest hotels in first class
cities require maids to live in and prefer that some of the pantry
workers and waitresses should do so. In these hotels chambermaids and
bathmaids living-in have the following wage rates:
1 paid at $4 but less $5 per
least than week
7 " " 5 " " 6 " "
17 " " 6 " " 7 " "
1 " " 7 " " 8 " "
2 " " 8 " " 9 " "
1 " " 9 " " 10 " "
If $9 for board and lodging is deducted from the $16.50 minimum wage of
the District of Columbia, $7.50 is left as the minimum wage for this
group of workers. When the wages of chambermaids living-in are taken, it
will be noted that only four out of twenty-nine hotels pay this wage or
more, and that over half pay between $6 and $7 per week.
Waitresses in one hotel in New York City where board and room are
furnished received $6.92 a week. Pantry workers, who are a skilled
class, received one of the highest wage rates found for women workers in
hotels. They have, however, no access to tips. In one hotel they
received $50 a month with board and lodging, or $11.53 a week, and in
another hotel $55 a month with board and lodging, or $12.29 a week. In
two hotels kitchen workers received $30 a month whether they lived in or
out.
Tipping
Tips, or the giving of gratuities by the patrons of the hotel to workers
who serve them, is the most unstandardized part of the earnings of the
worker. Because the giving of tips depends not only on the whim of the
public but upon the general prosperity of the country and the individual
prosperity of the patron, it admits of no standardization. Tipping seems
incongruous in that, by its own definition, the function of the hotel is
service. It amounts to a direct payment by the public of a part of the
worker’s wage.
It should be remembered that tips are received by chambermaids and
waitresses only. There are large numbers of bathmaids, cleaners, pantry
and kitchen help who have no access to tips.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The disadvantages of tipping]
The practice of tipping is defended by both workers and managers,
although it operates to the disadvantage of both. The management defends
tipping on the ground that the public wishes to tip. “He feels the
servant has given something extra and unexpected and he wants to pay
something for it—he tips.”[9] This manager indirectly admits, however,
that tipping is an imposition on the patron when he assures his guests
that no discourtesy will be shown a guest who does not tip. If managers
were candid they might admit that they wish the public to tip because it
enables them to pay their employees a lower wage rate.
Footnote 9:
Statler Service Codes. P. 7.
Patrons are frequently annoyed by the persistency of workers in
procuring tips. The guest who tips will get service at the expense of
the guest who doesn’t—maids are frank to admit this—and there is
consequently dissatisfaction of one class of guests. A guest in a hotel
has come to feel that the hotel rate is but one item in the expense of
staying there and naturally he resents it.
Between the workers and their superiors disputes arise over the
distribution of tips. Dissatisfaction and lack of cooperation result
which obstruct the smooth functioning of departments. Chambermaids
designate desk clerks as “sneaking devils,” because they think the desk
clerk takes their tips. They hate the bell-boys because they think they
get more than their share of tips. Waitresses, especially banquet
waitresses, have a constant grudge against head waiters. They think they
hold back a large share of tips from them. Maids resent it when
housekeepers give them transient corridors where tips are poor, and
waitresses accuse head waiters of putting them on poor stations.
Tips are a disadvantage to the worker because she can never know what
her weekly earnings are to be and plan her expenses accordingly. But she
defends tipping because she feels that this is the only part of her
earnings over which she has control. She knows her wage rate will be
low, but she may get big tips through her own efforts. The uncertainty
of the amount of tips has a romantic fascination for the maid or
waitress. She thinks that by an ingratiating manner to the guest, by
staying overtime to be on the spot when a guest leaves, by her
persistence, and by chance of securing a good floor or station she will
get tipped. Moreover, she has heard many stories of good tips. Maids and
waitresses boast of the good tips they receive and remain silent when
they get none. Each maid hopes that she will be the lucky one. But she
comes to realize reluctantly that she cannot control tips. She may not
get a good floor if she is a chambermaid but one on which transients
stop for one night and are never seen. In modern hotels the “regulars”
stop on the higher floors. She may not obtain favor with the housekeeper
or the desk clerk or the head waiter. She may be at lunch or supper when
a guest leaves. She may be growing old and the guest will not be pleased
by her manner. The lot of the older chambermaid who is in many respects
more efficient than the younger one, is especially hard. She does not
get tips and she ceases to expect them. This discrimination against the
experienced worker illustrates the unfairness of tips as a part of the
workers’ wage. Tips depend not so much on service as on a pleasing
appearance and manner. Advice to a new maid is to “fix yourself up” and
“don’t be bashful. The ones who get tips are those who stick around and
sass ’em back and make them notice you.” There is a question as to how
many of the tips received are legitimate tips. The danger to a young
girl, who ingratiates herself with the guests to get tips, is only too
evident. The girls often said to those who got no tips, “Oh, you’re too
straight to make good tips. Make up to them.”
The dissatisfaction of the maid who gets low tips grows and finally she
leaves her job. An employment manager of a large group of hotels in New
York City said, “From my experience as employment manager, I am
thoroughly convinced that the tipping system is more directly
responsible for labor turnover in hotels than any other one thing. An
employee will leave one hotel to go to another where exactly the same
wages are paid if she thinks the chance for tips is better.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The relation of tipping to wages]
Tipping, as a factor in the workers’ earnings, has been generally
overestimated. A study, made by the United States Bureau of Labor
Statistics during the war period when tipping was comparatively high,
shows that the average tip for a chambermaid in Buffalo was 40¢ a day
and the highest was only 71¢. In New York City the average tip received
by the chambermaids was 49¢ and the highest tip 83¢.[10] The Minimum
Wage Board of the District of Columbia in 1919 says of tipping: “Of the
48 maids from whom data on this point were obtained, 8 stated that they
received no tips, 7 stated the amount to be very little and the average
for those giving actual figures was $1.22 per week. It seems evident
that the tips received by maids were not sufficient to make any
appreciable addition to their wages.”[11]
Footnote 10:
Monthly Labor Review, September 1919. Wages and Hours of Hotel and
Restaurant Employees. P. 193.
Footnote 11:
Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia. Wages of Women in
Hotels and Restaurants. 1919. P. 5.
Certainly in New York State, according to the data gathered from this
investigation, tipping for chambermaids is negligible. It is difficult
to get an accurate estimate from maids as to their average weekly tips.
They remember a $5 tip they once got but not how much they get each
week. In one of the largest New York hotels, one maid says she gets $5
once in a while, then nothing for weeks at a time. One had had $3 in the
three months she had worked in the hotel. Another made 50 cents in 5
days. The investigators, while working in hotels, received less than $1
a week in New York City hotels and in the other hotels of New York State
only an occasional small tip of from 15 to 25 cents. It may have been
due in part to the fact that as new maids they worked on corridors for
transients and not for permanent guests. Their experience, however, was
borne out by statements of other maids. There was constant complaint
that tips were low. In up-state cities maids said, “You never expect
tips from travelling men any more. Only when a play actress or somebody
like that comes from New York you get a tip.” In New York City also
there was complaint that “houses are no good for tips now” and “no rich
people come any more.”
Waitresses, the few whom it was possible to interview, received much
larger tips than maids. It is more customary to tip waitresses and they
are always on the spot to receive their tips. Waitresses interviewed
received from $3 to $5 a day in tips. They form, however, a minority of
women hotel workers and their position in the industry is precarious,
due to the antagonism of the men waiters.
That a hotel can be run without tips has been demonstrated by a women’s
hotel in Washington, D. C., in which a minimum wage of $16.50 is paid. A
group of restaurants in New York City realizing the unfairness of the
tipping system, has attempted a standardization of tips. The patron pays
a 10% service charge with his bill, which per cent goes to the waiter at
the end of the week. This seems entirely satisfactory to the worker in
that it makes for a certainty of tips, but the pernicious principle
underlying the tipping system persists.
Living-in
The other uncertain element in a woman hotel worker’s earnings is the
board and lodging offered as a part of her wage. When a girl takes a job
she does not see her room and has no notion of what the food is like. If
she is an experienced worker she does not expect much.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Living-in a disadvantage to women with dependents]
All women cannot make use of the board and lodging offered in a hotel.
It depends upon the conditions of their personal life. Married women or
women with dependents are barred. So, in some hotels, where the same
wage is offered to workers living in or out, married women and women
with children are forced to accept the cash wage without the board and
lodging. Often this worked great hardship to the women whose husbands
were out of work. It was difficult, too, for the woman with dependents
for whom she had to maintain a home. A number of widows with children
were forced to accept the low cash wage. Finding that this wage would
not support them, many of them put their children in institutions and
lived in. They felt, on the whole, that this was a highly unsatisfactory
solution. With night work and a seven-day week, maids could rarely see
their children.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Money value placed upon food and lodging by the hotels]
The cost of board and room to employees, furnished as it is upon a large
scale, is without doubt much less than the cost of the same if purchased
retail by the employee. In order to judge of the value of board and
lodging which is offered by the hotel, it is necessary to have some
standards by which to measure it. Hotels have made no attempt to put a
money value on lodging and board. The only way an estimate can be made
of the cost to hotels is by the difference in wages paid to employees
living in and those living out in the same establishment. Even this
means is scarcely accurate because, in some cases, the same wage is paid
to both and a varying number of meals is eaten by the employees.
A few instances can be given, however. In three hotels where one group
of employees have meals and lodging and where the group living out took
no meals in the hotel, there was a difference in the wage between the
two groups. The difference which may be said to be _the value placed by
the hotels on food and lodging_ was, in the three hotels, $2.30, $3.04
and $3.46, respectively.
In seven hotels where one group lived in and one group roomed out but
ate in, the wage difference illustrates _the value set by the hotel upon
lodging_. The difference in wages varied from $1 a week to $2.31 a week.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Living on a hotel wage]
In the hotels of up-state cities Polish maids are beginning to replace
the American workers. One employment manager said, “We like these
foreigners. They don’t expect to spend so much money, and they’ll put up
with more.” Again and again the complaint was heard that the hotel wages
were insufficient to live on, even when food and lodging were included.
Many of the workers found it necessary to buy food in addition to that
provided by the hotel in order to keep their health. Those who did not
live in the hotels were unable, because of the irregular hour schedules,
to take advantage of the cheaper rates of boarding houses for meals. In
most cases they had no family connections on which they could depend.
They were forced, therefore, to buy their meals at restaurant prices or
else to cook them themselves. Workers, whose wage included three meals
but no lodging, were not always able to take advantage of the meals
offered. So it happened that waitresses and pantry maids, when their day
began in the afternoon, often had only one meal in the hotel. Again, if
they had family responsibilities, they could often not reach the hotel
in time for breakfast. If a maid’s day ended early she lost time by
staying for supper in the hotel. The result is that many workers eat the
noon meal only in the hotel and provide the other meals at their own
expense when they are rooming out.
Most of the hotel workers prefer to live out. “You like a room by
yourself which you know is clean. These hotel rooms have so many girls
in them, and they’re all kinds.” But those who do live out experience
the difficulty of paying rent out of their small wage. One girl, who
worked in a New York hotel for $35 a month and meals, had to pay $25 a
month for her room. “Of course,” she said, “I can’t live on that.”
A worker in a Rochester hotel, a widow with three children all living at
home, earned $10.50 a week with no board or lodging. She said her eldest
son was a printer who was out on strike. “He gets $19 a week strike
pay,” she said, “while I get $10.50 a week for working 7 days. Of course
my pay doesn’t make me independent. It just helps along. It doesn’t go
far when you have to buy your own shoes and shoes for a 12-year-old
boy.” One woman, who received $50 a month and lived out, worked all day
in the hotel and then packed candy every evening from 6 to 10 o’clock to
make enough money to live on. She had a family to support. Another
intelligent American woman, earning $10 a week, was keeping her sick
husband in one room for which she paid $8 a month. She had one bed and a
table. The rest of the furniture was packing boxes. She had to prepare
all the meals in her spare time.
Aside from food and rent, clothing is the largest item in the hotel
workers’ budget. Both a uniform for work and street clothes are needed.
The uniform was furnished by the hotel in only the largest New York City
hotels. When charged to the worker it cost about $4.00. She must also
furnish, if a chambermaid or waitress, a black waist and skirt for night
work. This waist usually costs from $2.00 to $2.50 and the skirt at
least $5.00. The waitress needs a number of clean white shirtwaists.
Shoes are an important item to both chambermaids and waitresses who are
on their feet all their working hours and must be neatly and comfortably
shod. Workers complained that they need shoes every three months and
that they cost at least $6 a pair.
After the necessary uniforms and a meagre supply of street clothing are
paid for, there is little left from the wage for incidentals and to meet
emergencies. Doctors and dentists are rarely consulted except in several
large hotels where doctors and dentists are employed by the hotel and
where workers can have attention at reduced rates. Women workers
neglected their teeth through poverty and ignorance. The older bathmaids
and maids frequently had only a few snags left. An oculist was an
unheard-of expense. Few of the older workers wore glasses even when they
had the greatest difficulty in seeing. Some used magnifying glasses to
read the newspapers, and others could not read print at all because of
the condition of their eyes. Magazines and newspapers were a luxury.
Workers never bought them and read only what was given them by guests.
Books were never seen. The workers seemed to have neither the energy nor
the money for any kind of self-improvement. The younger girls could
frequently find someone to take them out for amusement, but for the
older workers there was no recreation at all. They complained that they
could save nothing for their old age.
* * * * *
How many guests, who pay from $4.50 to $9 a day for their rooms, know
that _less than 6¢_ of this goes in cash to the chambermaid for her
services? In one hotel where these rates are paid, chambermaids receive
$300 a year or, allowing for two days off per month and a week’s
vacation, a little less than 90¢ for a working day. This is for cleaning
fifteen rooms. And yet we are told it is for service that we pay so
dearly in hotels!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIVING-IN CONDITIONS
The living-in conditions described in this report are the conditions
found by the workers who made the investigation. They lived in ten
hotels. These included some of the largest hotels in New York City where
a proportion of the women workers always live in.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Food]
The food for maids and other women workers is served in “Helps’ Hall.”
When the worker offers to take the new maid “down” to lunch she means it
literally. Usually it is in the second basement underground. Through
labyrinths, ill-lighted and heated, sometimes dripping from pipes
overhead, she finally arrives at “Helps’ Hall.” Sometimes she finds it
next to a basement laundry which is always steaming hot. As the worker
enters, she faces a long row of steam tables. She has her meal ticket
punched, grabs a tray, and gets in line. There is no choice of food. Her
tray is filled with soup, meat, potatoes and pudding and she deposits it
on one of the deal tables in the room and seats herself with the rest on
a bench without a back. If she comes late, there is often a litter of
spilled food and dirty dishes on the table which take away her appetite.
There is a rattle of tin knives and forks. Usually only maids and other
women workers are eating in the dining hall, although in small hotels
men and women eat at different tables in the same room.
In the hotels in which the workers lived in, they found the dining-room
service always hurried. Soup was usually spilled and too much sugar put
in the coffee. In one smaller hotel in New York City where men and women
ate together workers waited on themselves. All cut their bread from the
same loaf, dished out meat at the steam tables, often with the help of
their fingers, and poured their own milk. A late worker coming to lunch
found messed-over remains of food which had been fingered by many
unwashed hands of porters, laundrymen, maids and cleaners.
The quantity of food served was sufficient. Plates were well filled,
second helpings were often allowed, tea, coffee, milk, bread and butter
were always plentiful. Desserts usually “ran out,” but desserts were
considered a luxury anyway. The quality of food was inferior. Poor cuts
of meat and leftovers in the form of stew and hash with cold bologna for
supper was the usual meat diet. Tinned vegetables, carrots, beans and
macaroni without cheese were customary. Boiled potatoes were the
mainstay. Rice, in different forms, was always served. Rice and bread
puddings were the favorite desserts. Butter was often oleomargarine and
milk was thin and blue. Fresh vegetables, fresh salads and fruit never
appeared even in midsummer. It is true salads and melons were sometimes
served, but they were wilted, and workers would not touch them. Ice
cream, a very skimmed-milk ice cream, was served once a week on Sundays.
Stale French pastries and sour chocolate eclairs sometimes appeared.
The following menus for “Helps’ Hall” in a New York hotel illustrate the
unvaried, unappetizing and unhealthful food offered. The meals were
served on the hottest days of the month of August. Breakfast: Oatmeal,
unsalted and with lumps in it, sugar, tea and milk. Lunch: Macaroni
without cheese flavored with meat grease, boiled potatoes, bread and
corn bread, butter, coffee or tea and unflavored rice pudding. Supper:
Fish (which was very strong and unedible), boiled potatoes, bread,
butter and tea. Following this supper for lunch the next day there was
rice cooked in meat grease with boiled potatoes and stew added. For
supper there was stew again, corn bread, coffee, tea and bread pudding
flavored with cinnamon.
And so on, every day appeared stew and boiled potatoes during a week of
work in this hotel. The workers all complained of the food as not fit to
eat. They said, “They don’t care what they give you in a hotel. Don’t
eat most of it, it will kill you. They feed you like dogs here.” Many
workers did not come to lunch at all. They made a little tea and a
sandwich in their rooms. Many others on hot days, after eating such
meals, had indigestion and were forced to leave their work. They went
out for meals as often as they could, especially for supper. One girl
said, “I am so sick of potatoes. I do want some fresh vegetables and a
salad. Of course you can get a real meal sometimes outside, but, Holy
God, on our wages!” Another worker was overheard giving advice to a girl
who was leaving, “Well, kid, I tell you, it’s God’s truth this ain’t no
place for a young American girl like you. When you’re young, you can get
out. You get into a club, kid, where you get the same grub they eat
theirselves. Here, the grub will make you old before your time. Look at
me, I’m just thirty and I look fifty. If you stay here, you just get
used to the food and everything. You see, they’re all old ones here. You
get out. Now I just eat a little toast and tea some days. What else do
they give you? Potatoes! I tell you to get out, though I hate like hell
to see you go.”
The food served to pantry workers was much better and they could eat
salads and fruit if they cared to. They ate on the job, however, and
often had no time to eat their lunches. Waitresses in some hotels ate
the same grade of food as maids and kitchen help, but they “picked up”
extra food on the side.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Lodging]