Serving men and mothers: workplace practices and workforce composition in two US restaurant chains and states

Abstract

In this paper, we apply a ‘gendered lens’ to research that has sought to understand how private firm practices and public policies shape employment conditions. We report on a study of the realities facing a highly female-dominated job, that of waiter in low-end chain restaurants. Through interviews with managers at 16 sites of two international restaurant chains located in Seattle, Washington and Chicago, Illinois, we examined how the gender and family caregiver compositions of waiter workforces intersect with private employers’ practices related to waiter wages, fringe benefits, and staffing and scheduling and preferred job qualifications, on the one hand; and with mandated minimum wage regulations, on the other. Male waiters were most heavily concentrated in the chain with more generous benefits and input into scheduling, while the largest proportions of women were found in the chain offering few or no benefits and little scheduling control. Sites with the most waiter–caregivers came from both chains but were mostly in Seattle, aligning with a US state policy context assuring a higher minimum wage. Paralleling those findings, we observed that managers in especially male-heavy settings stressed intellectual and experience qualifications for waiter positions, while within more female and dependent caregiver employing sites they prioritized factors such as personality and ‘good hygiene.’

En este ensayo, aplicamos un ‘lente de género’ dentro de un proyecto de investigación que ha buscado entender como las practicas de las empresas privadas y las políticas públicas determinan las condiciones de empleo. Reportamos un estudio sobre las realidades que se enfrentan en un trabajo principalmente dominado por mujeres, en el caso de mesero(a) en restaurantes de cadena de bajo perfil. A través de entrevistas con administradores de 16 locales en dos restaurantes de cadena internacionales ubicadas en Seattle, Washington y Chicago, Illinois, examinamos como el género y la estructura del cuidado de familia de la población activa de meseros se cruzan con las prácticas de empresarios patrones privados relacionados con los sueldos de meseros, los beneficios marginales, y la contratación y selección de horarios así como las calificaciones preferidas para los trabajos, por una parte; y con regulaciones sobre el salario mínimo por otro parte. Los meseros hombres fueron más predominantes en los restaurantes de cadena con beneficios más generosos y más influencia sobre sus horarios, mientras que la población más grande de mujeres fueron encontradas en los restaurantes de cadena que ofrecen pocos o que no ofrecen beneficios y tampoco influencia sobre el horario. Los locales con la mayoría de mesero-cuidadores llegaron de los dos restaurantes de cadena pero estuvieron mayormente ubicados en Seattle; en donde en acuerdo con las políticas del estado que aseguran un salario mínimo más alto. Asemejándose a esos resultados, observamos que los administradores de los locales con más hombres hicieron hincapié en calificaciones intelectuales y experiencia para trabajos de mesero, mientras que entre los locales de empleos con más mujeres y cuidadores dependientes dieron prioridad a factores como la personalidad y ‘la buena higiene.’

Keywords:

• low-wage jobs
• gendered work
• minimum wage laws
• human resource management

Keywords:

• empleos de bajos ingresos
• oficios tradicionalmente desempeñados por determinado género (hombre/mujer)
• legislación sobre el salario mínimo
• administración de recursos humanos

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2009 American Sociological Association conference in Boston, MA. Grant funding is gratefully acknowledged from the West Coast Poverty Center Emerging Scholars Program and Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. The authors wish to thank Chip Hunter and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, and Rebecca Paradiso for translating the abstract into Spanish. The authors thank Melissa Ford Shah and Diane Arnold for their research assistance, and Larry Hunter for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

1. This work was completed while the second author was a graduate student at the University of Washington. The views expressed on methodological and theoretical issues are those of the authors and not the US Census Bureau.

2. Restaurant names are pseudonyms.

3. Both of the chains have locations worldwide. At the time of data collection, Community Spot had roughly 2000 sites in 20 countries, while Breakfast Place had more than 1300 restaurants in fewer than five countries (numbers have been rounded to protect confidentiality).

4. Managers generally reported limited corporate influence over local operations. Community Spot managers, however, described somewhat more involvement by its larger company in setting wages and benefits and in scheduling than their Breakfast Place counterparts.

5. We initially suspected that tip income at the ‘male’ sites may be larger than at their ‘female’ and ‘caregiver’ counterparts by virtue of customers who are on average wealthier and may in turn tip more. Manager-reported tip data do not support this, however; in fact, tips appeared to be the greatest at the ‘caregiver’ restaurants.