Report: Sexual harassment rampant in restaurants

A report due out today by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United says some 90 percent of women in restaurant jobs who depend on tips report being sexually harassed in some way.

According to USA Today, which examined the report, the problem is particularly rampant in states where restaurant employees working for tips have the lower federal minimum wage of $2.13.

Among the report's findings:

• Women living off $2.13 an hour plus tips are twice as likely to be sexually harassed as women in states requiring the full minimum wage for workers.
• Two-thirds of women and half of men surveyed experienced some form of sexual harassment by a restaurant manager, owner or supervisor.
• One-third of female restaurant workers were sexually harassed by customers at least on a weekly basis, and three-quarters of women surveyed experienced sexual harassment from coworkers on at least a monthly basis.

The National Restaurant Association dismissed the findings.

"These recycled attacks are part of a national, multimillion-dollar campaign engineered, organized and funded by national labor unions and their allies seeking to disparage an industry that has no barrier to entry and no limit to what employees can achieve," said Katie Laning Niebaum, vice president of communications for the NRA, in a statement.

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