Fair Eats Campaign Takes Root in Atlanta

9to5 Atlanta is thrilled to kick off 2011 as our Fair Eats Campaign makes serious moves to urge restaurant owners throughout the city of Atlanta to do the right thing and raise the minimum wage of their tipped workers! The minimum wage of tipped workers has remained stagnant at $2.13 for over 19 years. Annually, $2.13/hour equates to merely $4,430, forcing servers to rely solely on our tips. We know that especially in this current economy relying just on tips is both unpredictable and unjust!

Organizers and members at 9to5 have embarked on extensive outreach process and letter writing campaign in order to build our base of tipped workers as well as identify and champion restaurants in Atlanta that already pay more than $2.13. We are also thrilled about our 2/21 Talk Back Session where we will bring tipped workers and our allies to get to know one another and plan our strategy for which restaurants we will target and pressure to raise their hourly wages.

Low wage working women in the restaurant industry deserve more than $4,430 a year and 9to5 Atlanta seeks to forward our goal of economic justice one restaurant at a time!

Join us! For more information contact Vanessa at 404-222-0030 or vanessa@9to5.org

(Originally posted 1/6/2011)

Winter Social

Our annual Winter Social was a HUGE success! Thanks to everyone who attended the social that was held at Radial Café on December 11th. We were able to honor Ms. Claudia Lewis and Ms. Gloria Smith in style. Ms. Lewis and Ms. Smith have been active with 9to5 since 2000 and now serve as Board Co-chairs. These two members have been and continue to be an integral part of 9to5 Atlanta and a celebration in honor of these two amazing women was long overdue.

With your help we were able to raise over $850 to improve the lives of working women! We raffled off prizes from generous donors like IMAX, Ria’s Bluebird, Noni’s, Home Grown, The Porter and Stone Mountain, just to name a few! The night ended in a dance party that could have lasted all night. Next year we will have to start the dancing earlier!

Thanks again and we hope to see all of you soon.

Thoughts on the Department of Labor's Dialogue on Workplace Flexibility

On November 10, 9to5 Atlanta staff attended the Department of Labor’s “National Dialogue on Workplace Flexibility” at Emory University.  Sponsored by the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, the forum focused on flexible workplace options in the health care industry and highlighted health care businesses that offer commendable family-friendly policies.  Women’s Bureau Director Sara Manzano-Diaz spoke to the attendees about the importance of flexible policies for not just women but all working families: “Ensuring that our nation’s workers are able to balance their work and home lives without worry that they will lose their jobs is critical to our economic success as a country.”

Legislation supporting flexible workplace options that 9to5 Atlanta is actively working towards include: The Healthy Families Act which would guarantee all qualifying workers the chance to earn up to seven paid sick days per year; and a state law in Georgia allowing workers who receive sick leave to use that time off to care for a family member as well as themselves.

Beth English, Executive Director of Easter Seals of Southern Georgia and member of the Georgia Job/Family Collaborative Steering Committee, wrote the following about the benefits of attending this exceptional event:
“My participation in the National Dialogue on Workplace Flexibility was well worth the drive up from south Georgia.  The networking opportunities with other women concerned with making the workplace a family-friendly environment were wonderful.  The presentations were eye-opening.  In fact, our organization is exploring several of the programs that were highlighted and are planning to implement several of the practices that are not currently part of our operations.

“Working with over 2,400 families that are caring for loved ones with special needs has made Easter Seals very sensitive to employment practices that allow sick leave to be used for immediate family members.  Our policies have always included that type of flexibility.  Easter Seals looks forward to working with the Georgia Job Family Collaborative in continuing to advocate for workplace flexibility.”
Photo: Beth English

9to5 Atlanta's Fall Donor Update

Check out 9to5 Atlanta's fall donor update!  The publication highlights our Paid Sick Days Now! Day of Action, our Fair Eats Campaign, and features some of our newest staff members.  If you would like to receive a copy in the mail, email keely@9to5.org.  If you would like to learn more about how you can support 9to5's work, go to www.9to5.org/donate.

Child Nutrition Bill

A child nutrition bill was given final approval on Thursday in Congress. The bill sets new nutrition standards for school lunches, which have a major impact on the health of our children. The lunch program will feed more than 31 million children each day. This bill, which is hoped to reduce childhood obesity, was passed at a crucial time. Something needs to be done at a time when one of every three children in the United States is overweight or obese.

The bill allows nutrition standards to be set for foods sold in schools during the school day, including items in vending machines. The standards would require schools to serve more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products. Healthy food is more expensive so the bill will also increase federal reimbursement for school lunches. The bill would provide free lunches for over 100,000 children who are currently on Medicaid.

Opponents of the bill argued that it was just increasing government control. One opponent, Representative Paul Broun, Republican of Georgia said , “The federal government has no business setting nutritional standards and telling families what they should and should not eat.”

In my opinion, the passage of this bill is incredibly important for our country right now. With obesity rates higher than they have ever been, we need to change the way we eat in order to save America’s health. This bill will affect children in this country and hopefully have a positive effect on their future and the way they think about food. A few small changes can make a huge difference.

Jayne Mariotti, Jesuit Volunteer

9to5 Atlanta Welcomes Fair Eats Organizer

9to5 Atlanta welcomes our newest staff member! Vanessa Faraj joined us as the part-time organizer for the Fair Eats Campaign on November 16th. Vanessa earned her Masters degree in Social Work from Georgia State University in 2009. Her previous organizing and development experience includes work with Amnesty International, Project South, and Georgia Stand-Up.

"I am absolutely thrilled and humbled by the opportunity to work with 9to5," says Vanessa. "Low-wage women all too often bear the biggest burden of unjust place conditions and stagnant wages; 9to5 seeks to expose and eliminate these injustices. I am excited to build the momemntum around the Fair Eats campaign as we build power to raise the minimum wage of tipped workers in Georgia!"

Why I'm Still Fighting for the Paycheck Fairness Act

It would be an understatement to say that I was excited about the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was up for a cloture vote in the Senate earlier this week.  Part of my job at 9to5 is to help with online social media—twitter and Facebook and such.  Asha, our online organizer, told me to get the word out; I’m not sure if she was expecting me to get the word out quite as enthusiastically as I did.  By the end of the day Tuesday, I was sending a tweet about the PFA every half hour—not because anyone told me to, but because I wanted to.  I blogged about it on the 9to5 website.  I posted Joe Biden’s statement on the PFA as my Facebook status.  Senator Grassley back in Iowa probably thinks I’m stalking him, I left so many messages at his office.

I came to work on Wednesday morning overwhelmingly excited.  I was part of a movement, and it felt great.  To use a phrase we like at 9to5, I owned the PFA.  I’d worked to get it passed, and now I felt like the passage of the PFA was a personal issue.

With a slowly growing sense of uneasiness, I watched the votes roll in.  First Sen. Brown voted nay, then Sen. Snowe, then Sen. Collins.  I sunk a little lower in my seat with each update, but I still held out hope for someone having a last minute change of heart.  Then all the votes were in, and, unbelievably, we’d lost.

This was the first time I’d owned a cause that lost.  I’d certainly cared about outcomes of political fights before, but I’d never felt a loss quite so poignantly and personally.  I have the good fortune to say that all the campaigns I’d been really invested in had been successful, up until this point. The defeat of the PFA brought up a hard question I hadn’t had to face yet: What do you do after you lose?

The answer that I’ve settled on, cliché as it is, is that you keep going, because some things are too important to give up on.  Every week, Jayne and I get phone calls from women whose coworkers honestly believe that women don’t deserve the same respect as men.  Giving up on the fight to show the world that women have earned that respect is too important to be brushed aside by forty-one nay votes.

So I’m looking forward to this next legislative session, in the “bring it on” sense of looking forward to it. Because that’s when we get another chance to convince more people of all genders, citizens and elected officials, that women deserve respect, and they deserve marks of that respect: for example, equal pay.  Everyone deserves to be shown their inherent human worth.

In the meantime, I will be writing a stern memo to my senator, Mr. Grassley. I encourage you to do the same to yours.

By Beth Miller, Lutheran Volunteer

Demand Your 23 Cents: Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act

The statistic that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes doesn’t mean much to me anymore.  I’ve heard it so many times that I don’t even think about it.  On the surface, 23 cents hardly seems worth making a fuss over.


But it is worth making a fuss, and a big one at that.  Maybe instead of saying women make 77 cents on the dollar, we should say that women earn almost a quarter less than men in comparable jobs.  Worse yet, women of color make a little over half as much as white men.  Imagining my salary with an extra twenty-five percent on it suddenly makes those 23 cents on the dollar very relevant to my life and livelihood.

When I’ve mentioned the wage gap to acquaintances, some tell me that it exists because women choose lower-paying professions, don’t stay in school for as long, have less experience, or choose to stay home with children instead of working.  But according to a Catalyst study, male MBAs fresh out of business school, earned $4,600 more in their first year on the job than their female, childless counterparts (you can read the news story here).  It’s an inescapable conclusion: employers still pay women less than they deserve.
Since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, the wage gap has decreased by just a half of a cent each year.  Frankly, that’s not enough.  Women are still cheated out of an average of $10,622 each year.  What could you do with an extra ten thousand dollars next year?

Not only would equal pay improve individual women’s lives, it would benefit the country as a whole.  If women’s pay were equal to men in their same jobs, with their same experience, we could cut the poverty levels in this country in half.  In this economic climate, that’s no small thing.  At the moment, nearly four in ten single mothers live in poverty.  An extra 23 wents could go a long way towards providing for the families that rely on their wages to survive.

Not only do we need fair pay, we deserve it.  We deserve to be treated as equals, and so do our daughters, granddaughters, and all the women who will come after us.  We’ve earned that extra 23 cents.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will come up for a vote in the Senate this week. This bill is a crucial step towards pay equity.  Call your senators today and tell them that you’ve earned your 23 cents, and you want them to help you get it.

Contact your senators through 9to5's Action Alert, or call them at 1-877-667-6650. 

By Beth Miller, 9to5 Lutheran Volunteer