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a little bit more please from the studios of kpfk pacifica radio in Los Angeles this is uprising and I'm Sonali kolhatkar it's Monday April twentieth 2015 and explosive a new investigative report details how World Bank sponsored projects have displaced millions of people worldwide while claiming to end poverty will speak with the reports lead author Sasha Shafton and Congress has reached a deal to give President Obama fast-track authority on the trans-pacific partnership otherwise known as NAFTA on steroids my guest Patrick would all of food and water watch will explain what's at stake Plus tipped workers are getting left behind in the fight for a higher minimum wage will speak with Sophia Chang of the restaurant opportunity center this but now we'll turn to Robert Jensen for the news Robert Jensen is sitting in for rahul mahajan he's an author and a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin hi Bob hi Sonali less than a week after we reported on about four hundred deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea another even larger group of people has died under similar circumstances 700 people were estimated dead on Sunday when a fishing boat capsized off the coast of Libya that number is inching closer to a thousand today as european union officials are scrambling to luxembourg for an emergency meeting about the crisis rather than examining the obvious reasons why so many people are fleeing their countries ie war on poverty officials are likely to address the illegal ax t of trafficking British Prime Minister David Cameron said quote we should put the blame squarely with the criminal human traffickers who are the ones managing promoting and selling this trade in human life we are doing everything we can to try and stop them well Bob is it short-sighted to focus only on the traffickers or the coy phase of Europe as it is shouldn't officials be addressing the reasons why people are flying fleeing in the first place well you're absolutely right of course the trafficker is bear responsibility to them no one's arguing about that but David Cameron's comment it acknowledges a kind of moral blindness after all the question is why do people risk their lives knowingly risk their lives to try and get to a place like Europe or the United States and the answer is the incredible disparity worldwide in the distribution of wealth where did that disparity come from it's not a product of the global South it's a product of hundreds of years of policies of the global North at which the heart of course is great britain in similar imperial countries so David Cameron's attempt at moral evasion is at best temporary I think Europe understands it can't refuse to deal with this question and and luckily many of the officials in other European Union countries are are trying to deal with them it seems as though every week here in the United States police and Sun corner of the country bring us a story on the killing of a black man this week's story focuses on the city of Baltimore Maryland and the fatal shooting of a 25-year old man named Freddie gray boy died yesterday after being in coma for several days from injuries sustained after his arrest Gray's family is demanding answers to the questions of why he was arrested in the first place and what took place during the arrest in which four officers were involved Gray was in perfect health and if his arrest on April twelfth there's a 30 minute gap in the timeline of his arrest and medical records show his spine was eighty percent severed at his neck the officers involved have been placed on administrative leave and Baltimore Police are planning a news conference today at which they may reveal more details there are protests scheduled by family members and activists denouncing Freddie Gray's death well Bob you would think that the national attention being paid to the senseless police killings of black men would deter them but it doesn't seem to have had any effect does it well the police union in Baltimore cautions us against a rush to judgment so don't rush sonali but of course there's a and incredible body of evidence around the country about this pattern it doesn't mean of course every cop is a bad cop looking to shoot a young black man it's a pattern we have to deal with and it may be that there's a tipping point coming a point at which so many of these cases pile up that there's going to have to be action and then the question is what kind of action and I think the most basic suggestion we might make is that the police not investigate themselves at the district attorney which typically works with the police not be the prosecuting arm for these kind of cases that we create a system in which there's real accountability meaning outside prosecutions of these kind of cases I'm finally it was five years ago today that the BP deepwater horizon oil rig exploded off of the Gulf Coast of the United States killing nearly a dozen oil workers and setting off the one of the worst industrial disasters in the region the BP spill MP millions of gallons of crude oil into the ocean which prompted the use of millions of gallons of dangerous dispersants the effects of which are still unknown now the Obama administration was championed offshore drilling has proposed a new set of rules to address the serious risks involved in these types of operation and among the rules are better use of technology and more safety inspections there are several operations itching to proceed in Alaska and the south eastern shore of the u.s. the administration is inviting the public to comment on the proposed rules over two months the LA Times reports that the oil industry's could generally content with the new rules shouldn't we Bob be moving away entirely from offshore drilling first of all I must comment I'm struck five my own emotional reaction as you were recounting the BP spill a reminder this was not simply an accident this was a catastrophe I remember Naomi Klein describing it as not an oil spill but a hole in the world and I think that's important to hold on to if we do hold on to that and we're going to realize that not just deepwater drilling but mountaintop remover for coal tracking and of course the tar sands all of these forms of what are now called extreme energy are environmentally catastrophes there no way to do them safely you can try to improve the rules you can try and improve the technology but the real question is can we start thinking about a lower energy future these are tied if we can't think about a lower energy future these these resources are going to be exploited in incredibly dangerous ways and that's why the question of how we live and how we drill are inexorably tied I think Bob Jensen thanks so much for joining us today we'll talk to you again next week thanks enough Robert Jensen is an author and a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin sitting in for rahul mahajan we'll be right back welcome back to uprising I'm Sonali kolhatkar a major investigative report released last week by the international consortium of investigative journalists or iCIJ and the huffington post has found that projects funded by the World Bank have over the past decade displaced 3.4 million people worldwide a conservation program in western Kenya a gold mine in Peru and a so-called village ization effort in ethiopia arm on the program sponsored by the World Bank that have resulted in violent outcomes for ordinary people that include losing their homes the report is a culmination of work by 50 journalists for more than 20 news organizations covering 14 countries it concluded among other things that the World Bank would regularly failed to live up to its own policies for protecting people harmed by projects it finances on its website the World Bank touts two goals that it has set for itself by the year twenty thirty first to quote end extreme poverty by decreasing the percentage of people living on less than a dollar twenty-five a day to no more than three percent and second promotes shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom forty percent for every country but the icij report gives light of these goals my guest is Sasha chavkin he is a reporter with the international consortium of investigative journalists and the lead author of the report evicted and abandoned to the World Bank the World Bank's broken promise to the poor he's also directly worked on the World Bank's ethiopia project of village ization which has displaced thousands of people welcome to our prizing Sasha I thank you for having me well first how does it work how does the does a bank approached various governments or do government's approach the world bank do they come up with the plan to do some sort of development the data side is going to alleviate poverty and then just simply proceed with getting a World Bank load to finance that development normally its government the bank with ideas for project although we both were just together closely or to develop them ideas for then have to be approved by the bank or in order for the money to be loaned out in addition to government's the bank also give money to you companies are through its private sector look on international finance corporation and so I'm assuming that the bank signs off on the loans with guarantees that will actually benefit and not harm people since its goal is to end extreme poverty in the words of the bank and you report you you quote Naveen rye a former world bank official who says that the bank routinely does not follow up to ensure that the projects that eight funds actually benefits the people can you comment on that right so thankful rules obliged to find out that it's project for complying with the docto an environmental safeguards a project have the borrower the gut that are getting my special we're going to call you on your phone and keep your video up because we're having trouble hearing you so we'll get your audio via phone Sophia we're going to try calling you right now on the phone since we're having trouble hearing you so so that our audience can hear your answers a little bit more clearly and actually in the meantime I also want to point our audience to the investigative reports results the entire report itself along with very sophisticated interactive web links that's available on a special section of the huffington post the report is entitled evicted and abandoned and can be found at the huffington post's website and along with a map where the audience can click on countries to find out what projects the World Bank has financed in those particular areas and the impacts that have had that have sort of gone against the mission of the World Bank to end extreme poverty and has instead displaced people it's a it's a remarkable report that isn't being paid much attention to again the name of the report is evicted and abandoned the World Bank's broken promise to the poor and my guest Sasha champion is the lead author of that report and he has led a number of journalists something like 50 journalists across 20 countries we're going to try to get Sasha on the phone in the meantime we'll just take a short break while we try to get them do bear with us but this report is very much worth listening to a listening about and hearing about and watching so don't go away we'll be right back and we have Sasha chavkin on the phone with us he's a reporter with the international consortium of investigative journalists and the lead author of the report evicted and abandoned the World Bank's broken promise to the poor hi Sasha hi so back on again yeah you so you were saying that uh you know that there seems to be a serious problem with the World Bank not really following up on the projects that its sponsors and checking to see if the projects that it has given funds for is actually doing more good than harm right um so if I was saying the bank has an obligation to check that all of its social and environmental protections are followed and including included in that it's actually supposed to ensure that people who are displaced are going to be resettled under equal or better conditions what we found is that our documentation that the bank's documentation of that is incredibly in complete and that they're frequently is very little follow-up on whether that rule is actually complied with so this number that you and other journalists found is quite remarkable 3.4 million people displaced between 2004 and 2013 let's let's turn to the reasons why these displacements are happening this is just a huge number and what do you mean by the word displaced when we hear the word displaced it might sound a little euphemistic but what does it really mean it can be quite violent right right so displacement can refer to one of three things it can mean people who are evicted from their homes essentially and have to abandon the place where they're living it can be people who lose some or all of their land and it can be people whose livelihoods are damaged by projects so all of those kinds of harm's are included within displacement again the bank is supposed to be restoring everyone who's affected that way to equal or better can ditions about what we found is that frequently that's not what's happening so let's turn to one example of displacement let's talk about Ethiopia so-called village ization effort the youth European government took a loan from the world bank and the end and then essentially it was found that some of those funds were diverted possibly illegally or at least without full oversight and it ended up that the Ethiopian government began re settling people into these villages saying that they would get better services what actually happened right so the Ethiopian government came up with a program called villages ation and what village ization promised to do was take isolated rural people and move them into government villages where they were supposed to get clinics and schools and clean water and better services it turned out that that isn't what happened but the services weren't delivered and there relocations turned out to be forcible and were imposed by the government and by ethiopian soldiers and these are indigenous people it's a group of indigenous people call the anorak they haven't just lost their homes though right tell us about the beatings and the arrests the intimidation and even the rapes so I spoke with an you a CREP youjizz who are in a camp in South Sudan they actually fled into South Sudan despite the civil war going on there because they faced such violence in Ethiopia I spoke to a man who described being beaten within inches of his life women who described being raped and in fact I even spoke with the former governor of the Ethiopian state where these evictions occurred who acknowledged to me that there was violence and intimidation involved with the village ization program and so these are people who are indigenous communities that were essentially told by the government that they have to move into these formal villages forced into these villages and all thus financed by the World Bank the World Bank is patting itself on the back saying that it's working to alleviate poverty how is it allowing this to happen well to be clear the world bank is giving money for a nationwide health and education program in Ethiopia called protecting basic services which is funding schools and hospitals and all kinds of good stuff across Ethiopia the thing is that the money that is supposed to be going into that program is being diverted by Ethiopian federal authorities into this forcible relocation program and so no one is suggesting that the bank wants this to happen but the bank is warned over and over by an you a creff youjizz by human rights groups and by others that this is happening and it refuses to listen to those warnings and instead continues to give hundreds of millions of dollars on to the same program now I understand that the bank has both denied that there have been specific problems but then accepted that there might have been some problems with some of the projects that it funded in UAE Theo Pia report you said that the World Bank's country program coordinator for Ethiopia Greg to Merlin said quote we are confident that the money was used for the purposes int nded we remain confident there was no link with reports of abuse so in one hand they seemed to be denying it but then when confronted with the fact that the organization ought to be checking up on the projects that it funds he said we're not in the physical security business implying to the bank can't police how their funds are used is this a cop-out um well what the bank says is that they're blamed for unrelated abuses by governments but borrow from them they say that they're an organization that has high standards for protecting people and particularly for protecting people who are displaced so when there's a problem somewhere else people try to blame the bank because they think the bank is more likely to help them get get compensation the issue though is how the world thanks money is being used and in the case of Ethiopia a number of former Ethiopian officials have said that the bank's money itself was used for this violent eviction program so the real question is how is the world bank's money itself being spent by these borrowers and what is the bank doing to check how its money is being spent now you see in your Ethiopia report that the evictions in Ethiopia Feder larger pattern communities displaced amid World Bank Group projects and Nigeria Honduras Kenya Indonesia India Guatemala and Uganda have accused the organization's borrowers of committing human rights violations is there a pattern to the displacement and the abuses all over the world from World Bank funded projects I'm assuming the answer to that is yes which is why you and your fellow investigator investigative reporters did this report so over and over again we found examples of communities describing serious human rights violations connected with World Bank projects in Kenya there were indigenous people who described having their homes burned to the ground as they were evicted from ancestral forests in Honduras there were peasants involved in a land conflict with a company financed by the World Bank's private sector lender who said that dozens of their members dozens of members of peasant groups were murdered by security guards connected to the World Bank's client there are very serious allegations that are out there in case after case and what we found is that repeatedly the bank is continuing to lend to many of these clients even after the allegations emerged I understand that the World Bank president Jim Yong Kim responded to the report and said we took a hard look at ourselves on resettlement and what we found caused me deep concern are they acknowledging that there are problems finally particularly may be prompted by your report I the World Bank has admitted that they have serious problems with three settlement and they say that they have a plan to fix those problems which Jim Kim himself announced when he made that statement in March the bank claims that it is acting based on its own internal reports however the timeline is that they made this announcement five days after we sent a set of detailed questions to the bank in which we told them that we had identified systemic gaps in their resettlement practices and that in fact we had been leaked one of the internal reports that the bank released five days later so we'll leave it for your listeners judge what happened but that's the order of event well certainly there is great power an investigative journalism to effect positive change the report is extremely ambitious clearly was the result of collaboration of a lot of people and institutions how did it all begin where did this reports origin start and and and how can people best explore the work because there is a lot to explore well one of the things that really caught my attention was just all of these complaints I found from communities that were describing as I told you before serious human rights abuses involved with evictions and in many cases just thousands and thousands of people being forcibly resettled from their land one great way for people to explore the project is first to go to all the project's website at huskie 0 / World Bank and then also to specifically look at our interactive database where we have compiled all the information the World Bank was not keeping track of very closely and you can now search by country by economic sector and look in detail at all the projects that are displacing people how many people are being displaced in them and how it may affect your country or are the industry that you particularly are focused on researching that's Huff a dot p 0 / World Bank I want to thank you so much Sasha for joining us today and best of luck to you thank you for having me and for those of you who missed the link will post it to uprising with sonali calm later today sasha chavkin as my guest she's a reporter with the international consortium of investigative journalists lead author of the report we've just been discussing evicted and abandoned the World Bank's broken promise to the poor this is uprising we'll be right back you this is uprising I'm Sonali kolhatkar did you know that uprising is now a TV show as well as a radio show you can watch this show on free speech TV or you can subscribe to our YouTube channel for a very small monthly fee which helps us sustain the costs of TV production find out more at youtube.com slash uprising with sonali republicans and democrats put aside their differences last week to hand over power to the president it's an unusual move until you consider the issue at stake the trans-pacific partnership or TPP the massive and secretive trade agreement that is opposed by a broad coalition of Labor student and activist groups has been all but cleared by Congress for so-called fast-track legislation that means the president would have the authority to negotiate trade deals like the TPP and present them to Congress for only a yes or no vote without amendments Republican senator Orrin Hatch justified the move saying quote it's important for America it's important for the world that we get this done one of the few senators opposing fast-track sharon brown called it however a complete abdication of our responsibilities TPP is considered NAFTA on steroids organizations around the country are scrambling to urge their representatives to vote no on fast track Authority saying that TPP will make human rights labor laws and environmental standards subservient to corporate profits over the weekend the afl-cio spearheaded a national stop fast track day of action joining me now is Patrick would all research director and senior policy advocate for food and water watch public policy analysts research or an advocate on economic justice issues in Washington and co-author of a book on the World Trade Organization Patrick had been on uprising only a couple of weeks ago to discuss the details of a TPP chapter that had leaked welcome back to the show Patrick it's great to be here thank you now can you explain for a layperson what fast-track Authority actually means I tried to explain it I think but it might be worth really getting it straight does it essentially mean that Congress is giving up its authority to have input on this major deal absolutely it's a total abdication of congressional authority over international commercial agreements the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive authority to negotiate the term was in set the terms of commercial agreements fast-track is a nick Sounion plan that actually forces Congress to surrender that authority and only vote up or down and on a very accelerated timetable on a trade deal that will be thousands of pages long so really what should happen is Congress should be setting kind of binding negotiating goals they should be able to ensure that those goals are met in the negotiations and there should be steps along the way for a strong congressional enforceable binding input on the negotiations this would kind of sidestep all of that and let the president choose the partners choose the terms of the deal and then present it for an up or down take-it-or-leave-it vote to the congress why would Congress want to abdicate its responsibility I mean it just seems bizarre if you look at the pattern and practice of particularly Republican politicking since President Obama has been in power this seems to be at least on the surface going against their usual practice and in fact fastrack is sort of an anomaly there's only been fast-tracked for a little while during the last 25 years the beginning of of the kind of Bush at the end of the first Bush administration in the beginning of the first Clint at Clinton administration and then at the beginning of Bush up to there was fast-tracked but generally there have been a ton of trade deals that have passed without fast track and it's not required to do it the argument they make is that it forces countries to make their best negotiating offer because they don't think the Congress will meddle with the process so they argue that it is easier to get the best deal with bass track but the reality is that if Congress had been part of this process all along we could be negotiating for a trade deal that would work not just for big business which is what this deal is designed for but for the for working families for the environment for Public Health for consumer protections now Patrick senator orrin hatch and Representative Paul Ryan both of whom are Republicans were pushing fast-track but they worked with demo pratik Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon I mean orrin hatch and Paul Ryan I can understand the Republicans but Ron wine Ron Wyden has been characterized as a hardcore liberal he joined the Republicans for example during a filibuster to oppose John Brennan as CIA director so he has joined the Republicans in the past but on this issue of secrecy in that matter he said it comes down to every American has the right to know when their government believes that it is allowed to kill them well some might argue the TPP could very well damage Americans if not kill us why is a widen pushing for the secret trade bill I think are a couple of reasons one is that you know sort of the leadership on the Senate Finance Committee is really only given to people that are willing to be pro trade so it really is a core tenet of being part of that committee there there a lot of pro trade people on both sides of the aisle on that on that committee the second is there's intense pressure both from the White House but also from the big business community to actually get a bipartisan support for this the White House needs there to be at least the patina of bipartisanship for a deal that almost all Democrats oppose pretty vehement Lee and obviously many Republicans are going to oppose it as well so they wanted to present a more bipartisan deal for this so widen extracted some minor concessions a really window dressing on things like transparency that will ultimately have no real effect and instead we have pretty much the same old fast track that we had in 2002 and in 1991 so that's the pressure that is on all members of Congress but it comes down especially hard on senator Wyden who is the ranking member on that committee now a fast track goes through I'm assuming that Congress will know the details of this deal before they're allowed to vote up or down on it without being allowed to amend it but when will we the people know the details of it well I think the the final text of the deal will be made public really when the ill is introduced so once the treaty is signed by the president it would actually go to the Congress and then there would be a short window and we would see it we would have ability to see it at that point there are actually two pieces of the treaty there is the treaty if not treaty it's a commercial talk not a treaty but the TPP itself as well as implementing legislation that would actually change any laws to bring them into conformity with the requirements on the TPP so they're there those would come together so we would see that really when it was presented to Congress and we would have a very brief only months to look at it before it was considered by the Congress and we've discussed of details of the TPP a number of times on our show including when we had you on specifically discuss a one chapter but how do you summarize this to the average American has never heard of TPP trans-pacific partnership and how it could impact them because unfortunately major media is not covering this as it should and ordinary people who've never heard of the TPP probably have no clue that it could actually impact americans on a day-to-day basis right sure i mean there are a number of pretty obvious ways that it's going to impact people the first is obviously that could end up offshoring even more jobs both in the manufacturing sector but even in places like call centres and in the service industry where these jobs could be shift into places where they're cheaper workers worse workplace protection and beaker environmental standards of it we discussed the investment provisions which would allow foreign companies to challenge really common sense consumer public health and environmental protections which could have effects on everybody's day-to-day life in terms of you know there are huge food safety implications to this which ultimately would mean that you know we would live in a world these issues could end up on our kitchen table as we imported more potentially tainted food from TPP nations with weaker oversight at the border so they're real tangible effects on people but it also has effects on things like access to generic medicines because it will strengthen the patent regime and give the pharmaceutical and mystery longer patent terms and that means it will take longer for generic meds to get onto the market means it's going to cost people more money so there are a lot of very day-to-day issues that all of that people it's not a kind of a theoretical problem it's one that will affect people almost immediately now the afl-cio announced that as soon as Congress introduces fast-track the labor union will launch a massive six-figure advertising campaign to pressure 16 senators and 36 members of Congress to a post fast track the campaign is a plan to run through August it will begin with digital ads may expanded the TV radio and newspaper how important is it for organized labor to stop this and can they well I think it's very important for organized labor to stop this and they are super committed to doing so this is a really a powerful moment in the labor movement first all the presidents of all of the organized labor in the country have signed a letter saying they are opposed to it so a very unified front amongst organized labor second all of the labor unions are withholding political donations until they see how people vote on fast track that sends a powerful message to the congress that this is a key issue for them and then obviously workers care a great deal about this because they understand fundamentally that TPP will do the same thing that now too did empower the the business owners to move their jobs overseas will observe pressure downwards pressure on wages exacerbates income inequality and is used to crack Union so there are obviously lots of reasons for workers to be opposed to this this is a powerful part of the broad-based coalition that is operating today to stop fast-track it includes many environment most of the environmental community and includes consumer groups like food and water watch it includes public health groups concerned about the access to essential medicines and generics and lots of people that are concerned about the impact it can have on local governance and sovereignty issues so there's a broad-based coalition it's working very hard to stop faster now what should we expect from the pro free traders about the beautiful things that will arrive on the shores of the u.s. if the TPP were to pass and become the law of the land how are they selling this to Americans well they sell it a number of ways one is by just essentially being fairly deceptive right so they say that there'll be all these new jobs because of exports but they never talk about that jobs that are lost here because of more imports and that's been the experience with every trade deal that we've had to date that the increas in imports vastly exceeds the export increase and actually hurts the number of workers here and lowers wages as I said they will also say that it's very important geopolitically because they're using this is because if we don't set the rules than China will set the rules so they make this argument is part of this Asia pivot that the president has promoted and they have their trotting out the hosts of the kind of gray beards in both sides of the aisle to promote this as important for u.s. foreign policy which is really the silliest argument that I heard I mean there there's no risk that we're going to have worse relations with Australia or Singapore because we don't have the TPP it's not like Japan will no longer be our friend if we don't sign the TPP so I mean they're going to make a ton of arguments and the that are largely deceptive and people know right they have experience with what happened with NAFTA's lost jobs more dangerous imported produce and you know those problems are just going to be expanded with the TPP and finally a Patrick there were major protests in Europe over the weekend over not the TPP but the TTIP not to be confused with the TPP TPP is the trans-pacific partnership TTIP is a transatlantic trade and investment partnership this is a free trade agreement currently being negotiated between the European Union in the United States it's not getting very much attention Europeans at least to those who march over the weekend seem to be against it is this something we need to be paying attention to as well we absolutely need to pay attention to it and I will say the negotiations are not as far along as the TPP negotiation which is why there's somewhat less attention to it the fast-track bill that was introduced this week is designed to cover gpp as well as the tjc and uh it's important to realize that they're kind of very important but somewhat different issues with with the chip I mean obviously the key issue with Europe is one not of the kind of terror as much on the tariff side but much more on the regulatory side so it's really an opportunity versus the wall street fat cats to kind of do an end run against the regulations designed to address the economic collapse and dodd-frank and their counterparts in Europe that are trying to do the same thing with rules there to stop kind of rampant deregulation on the financial services side so those kind of things are key issues in the chi tip that are less common in the TPP negotiations but those kind of regulatory issues really demonstrate what this is all about because it's not about the kind of old-school trade agreements that are about tariffs and quotas it's really about giving the big business is an opportunity to do seek attack on the kind of regulatory safeguards across the board that we use to protect consumers from economic collapse and dangerous food and dangerous products those are the kind of regulatory coherence arguments that are being used to in these secret negotiations to kind of unravel the protections we've built on for decades well I want to thank you so much Patrick for joining us we'll be staying on top of the story and letting our audience know what happens with fast-track Authority in particular thanks so much thank you Patrick would all is a research director and senior policy advocate for food and water watch and he writes about these issues that we've been discussing as well you can read his writings from a link that will post to uprising with Sonali com this is uprising after this short break we'll find out what tipped workers are being left out of the fight for higher minimum wage stay tuned welcome back to uprising I'm Sonali kolhatkar if you've done a lot of traveling outside the United States one of the differences that might jump out at you when you eat out or travel by taxi is it the culture of tipping people for services varies dramatically for example in Japan tips are not only uncommon they're considered insulting in some countries like Germany it is considered obligatory to tip regardless of the service places like Italy restaurants but a cover charge on your bill in lieu of requiring a tip here in the United States it's considered customary to typically fifteen percent of your bill but only if you've gotten good service if you're really impressed twenty percent is the norm it's a curious custom perhaps one that grew out of the personal responsibility mantra in the US but what is curiouser is that it places the onus of payment on to the customer twice you pay a company for service and then you pay the worker you deal with what the company won't pay them such a system not only makes workers subservient to the whims of customers but also allows companies to exempt themselves from paying a living wage tipped workers are often singled out for lower minimum wages and other workers recently the Minnesota House passed a bill to lower the hourly wage of tipped workers to only eight dollars an hour succumbing to the restaurant industry's lobbying Nebraska rejected a bill that would have raised the wage for tipped workers to the same levels of other workers and in California there's a proposal to freeze the wages of tipped workers to nine dollars an hour if the minimum wages increased to 13 my guests to Sophia Chang community organizer with a restaurant opportunity Center for Los Angeles and Zuni ms okami a member of roc who's had 10 years of experience in the restaurant industry welcome to rising Sophia and Zuni let me ask you first to explain how did we even get into situation Sophie I mean I I sort of mentioned the various countries who decides how much to tip and why we a we wait we tip wait staff at a restaurant but we don't take grocery store clerks or cashiers unless they help us with our bags and even then we're not sure we took hairdressers and car washers but we don't have gardeners or parking lot attendants or do we we took valets and doormen but we don't tip concierges who decides who gets tripped and why who decides who's way just should remain low because they're not getting tipped um Thank You Sonali for having us on the show and like you pointed out the tip workforce is a really diverse workforce here in Los Angeles you know fifty six percent of the typical course is actually outside of the restaurant industry and like you said a lot of those are service jobs like hairdressers carwash workers hospitality people people who clean so you know California is one of the few states that has just one fair wage one minimum wage for all workers and in other states in the US 43 states there's a tipped minimum wage it's a sub minimum wage for people who are tipped workers and its really the corporate restaurant lobby that has kept the tip minimum wage the federal tip minimum wage frozen at two dollars and thirteen fins so in California now they want to create this two-tier system right where there is a pressure to raise the wages of workers but the restaurant industry wants to freeze the wages of tipped workers zoomy can you tell us first a little bit about your experience in the restaurant industry and is it really true that tipped workers as those in the restaurant industry claim are getting well above nine dollars an hour even more than fifteen dollars an hour because of all the tips that are apparently flowing into your pockets thank you well there's a lot of misconceptions about tipped workers and I think that folks that are representing the restaurant industry as owners often are saying that tipped workers are making thirty forty fifty dollars an hour because of their tips which could be true for some people but I think that that's a really small percentage of servers or of restaurant workers so if you are working in the very high end restaurants and if it if you're counting just the lunch hours maybe when there's lots of people and if you have a certain kind of clientele then you might at certain times be getting thirty forty dollars an hour yeah and I think that to get those jobs in fine dining restaurants you have to fit a certain profile and that's racial and that's gendered as well so in the u.s. if you're going to be serving in a fine dining restaurant and you're going to be considered for that kind of position then you're you need to fit that profile we need to be white and male and look very clean and you have to be able to you have to be able to portray what that clientele is going to and the rest of the majority of tipped workers certainly don't you saying you have that sort of wage when you account for tips yeah and tell us about your own experience in the restaurant industry sure so I've been working the restaurant for about 10 years and in various positions in the back of house and the front of house and as a tipped worker I know that we share our tips as well in many of the establishments that we work for so it's not just that person who's who's putting down the plate that actually gets your tip it's it's actually the back of house it's the bussers the runner it's the bartender yeah and I think that you mentioned it a little bit earlier that we are also subsidizing our wage with the tips so as as a front of house worker if you're tipping out if you're tipping out and you're sharing your tips with the cooks and with the chef's then you're you're also helping them make more money because they're making a very low wage to begin with and and uh Sofia the issue of who's subsidizing these wages also comes into play when we look at the fact that many of the tipped workers in the industry around the country and even probably in California with this program is paid are getting public assistance right i mean they we know walmart workers get a lot of public assistance because they're paid so little but what about tipped workers is the public also subsidizing the industries that use tipped workers that absolutely right because just looking at Los Angeles it's a very expensive city to live in I think you know there was a recent estimate that the average person living in LA needs to make thirty-three dollars an hour just to be able to afford rent basic necessities and according to census data you know on seventy percent of servers in LA make less than twenty-four thousand so it's definitely not a living wage when folks are not getting a living wage then there's dependence on basically the public through taxpayers to survive and Raquel a well we're from is part of a national organization rock United you can check out rocky United org we just came out with a report about basically across the nation the amount that taxpayers are subsidizing the wages is the low wages of restaurant workers rush limbaugh and fox news recently made a big deal about Hillary Clinton not leaving a tip at a Chipotle when she went there and Ohio recently one of the branches there and they're saying that you know if she really cared about working people she would have left a tip but others are saying she didn't need to tip because it's a there's no table service at a place like chipotle is that the wrong conversation that we need to be having I mean you know it's like we're focusing on are we forgetting about the fact for a moment that it's Hillary Clinton we're focusing on the customer rather than the industry rather than the employee right employer or rather yeah I'd love to chime in on this and the maybes and you can add to but I think the main point is that everybody needs a living wage and a minimum wage there's a reason it's called a minimum wage because it's a minimum standard I think the point is nobody should be working and living in poverty and so you know in California nine dollars even fifteen dollars wouldn't really be enough when you look at other states the fact that people are getting paid between two and three dollars you know is really not acceptable and so we feel that it is the responsibility of employers to pay their employees and it shouldn't matter um your offer if they're the tip in the tip is there right so federally there's a federal minimum wage of seven dollars twenty-five cents an hour and we should clarify this so in states where there is no minimum wage or no minimum wage higher than 725 people are getting a base rate of 725 but tipped workers in those states are getting something like two to three dollars an hour and and you know this is just unbelievable to think about that so unless they happen to live in a state where tipped workers specifically are getting a certain minimum wage they're getting even below the federal minimum wage how are tipped workers participating in the fight for 15 campaign that we've been seeing around the country is their solidarity from other workers are people recognizing across the industry that tipped workers in particular need to also demand and get higher wages yes um yeah a lot of people are spending a lot of energy fighting for a higher wage in in multiple industries and we're seeing a lot of similarities in our industries one thing is that a lot of low-wage workers are experiencing a wage theft and it's because we're seen as disposable and we're seen as being low skilled or no skilled which is untrue so wage theft meaning that our wages are often stolen from us in very sly ways and I think that the reason that tips are such a big are such a big conversation right now are is kind of also in conjunction with the fact that we're not making minimum wage even when we have a minimum wage because a lot of times people people's wages are being stolen from them no Sophia we usually think of the restaurant industry when we when we talk about tip to workers but what about car washers and nail salon workers other luige tipped workers are you know how serious is the situation there too I'm really glad you asked that like I mentioned before fifty-six percent of the typical workforce in Los Angeles is outside of the restaurant industry and these are not only low-wage jobs these are like there's only imagine very racialized engender jobs so for example the majority of the tipped workforce both nationally analyst Los Angeles are women and so creating a sub minimum wage for tipped workers would actually be really in you know institutionalizing making permanent this wage gap and there's also a lot of any moment exactly and there's also a lot of harassment we know in tipped work and so for example just the restaurant industry it has five times the rate of harassment claims as any other industry and you know this is something we shouldn't be surprised by when you put the the discretion of paying part of the wage on to the customer and you create a power dynamic between the customer and the worker you're going to have abuse I mean you're going to have abusive man expecting women workers to earn quote-unquote their tips you're going to see this happen I mean it's just inevitable so let me ask both of you this question would we like to live in a world where we never have to tip because the workers are paid so well it never becomes an issue and the cost of the salaries are built into the products that people are buying I would rather pay more for a cup of coffee and not have to worry about tipping because I knew that the workers made my coffee is being paid a living wage would you rather have that world yeah I think I would but it would be so complicated to reach that world and but it's all complicated now it is really complicated right now um yeah it is really complicated right now especially because we're dealing with an industry that the workers are experiencing a lot of theft from their wages so I think as a consumer many people think okay if I tip well then other people are tipping well but then that the the reality is a lot of people don't tip especially if you're talking about restaurants or establishments that are in more working class neighborhoods it's it's different you know our mindset around money is different and it's difficult to really depend on a tip because because they're unpredictable in depending on on the consumer it's up to them this if you have an opinion on this issue I think um you know the statistic that that we had mentioned earlier that folks need really even 30 over thirty dollars an hour to survive in Los Angeles so we know that you know right now tips are tips are a really important source of income for a lot of tipped workers and and of course the industry is relying on that they're saying that because of tips we can pay less anyway that's certainly a conversation for a broader there's a broader conversation to be had there about the need for tips and would be interesting to see how other countries handled other countries were tipping isn't the norm but people are paid well and what all of that means it was recently in action at a meeting of investors in New York by roc organization the National version national organization the restaurant Opportunity Center where number of active is disrupted an investor's meeting can you tell us a little bit about that and the kinds of creative actions that workers are taking to draw attention to their issue sure absolutely so when when people find out that tipped workers in other states outside of California are making two dollars and thirteen cents an hour people are really outraged and there's a question about why is this happening and a big part of it is because the corporate restaurant lobby the National Restaurant Association and here locally the California Restaurant Association is very strong and it's made up of you know key companies such as the applebees of the world and also Darden which is the largest full-service restaurant corporation in the u.s. they own for example olive garden and yard house and so recently shareholders 4-darden or in New York and Darden workers and activists and organizers came together to interrupt the shareholders meeting to basically say you know we know what you're doing and it's it's unacceptable every worker deserves a living wage and I should also mention there are as I understand it to people who have been on a hunger strike outside the city hall in Los Angeles a number of actions around the fight for 15 I want to thank the two of you so much for joining us to be and best of luck to you and thank you for shedding light on how tipped workers are in danger of being left behind out of this very big fight thank you so much and if I can just add one thing we were in Sacramento this past week and so we saw the successful defeat of Assembly Bill 669 which would have introduced it to a minimum wage so we're winning we're trying to educate the public about the reality of took over thank you again sophia chang and zooming music ami both with a restaurant opportunity center this is uprising bipasha showmes our senior producer Anna buses are assistant producer Christian Becca's a production coordinator dance word love is our technical director Federico Garcia turner our audio engineers Andy Mendoza's our social media coordinator subscribe to our youtube channel at youtube com surprising with sonali our website is uprising with sonali calm are in music is by Quetzal I'm Sonali kolhatkar host an executive producer of uprising OC tomorrow you