“It is the only job that a woman like me can get easily, and it has been able to take care of me and my family. It is not fancy, but it pays the bills.”
These are the words of waitress Rose*, who works for a steakhouse in Illovo, Johannesburg, as she reflected on a job she has know all her life since arriving in South Africa in 2010.
Rose, 40, of Yeoville, has a Zimbabwean permit and has been using the money she gets from being a waitress to take care of her two school-going children and her parents, also living in South Africa.
Her basic salary is R28 an hour, but that varies.
“Our employer makes sure that you do not work too many hours so that they do not pay you a lot of money. You can work about six to eight hours in a day depending how busy it is. Sometime the rate rises to R50 an hour, but the number of hours in those days will drop to five,” Rose said.
Our employer makes sure that you do not work too many hours so that they do not pay you a lot of money.
— Rose, 40, of Yeoville
The focus on the working conditions of waitrons come after a viral video by a waitress at the Babel restaurant in Pretoria. Calling herself Molly Brave, she alleged mistreatment and unfair labour practices at the eatery. Among the issues the waitress raised was being compensated through only tips with no basic salary.
After the video went public, the department of employment & labour conducted raids at different restaurants where people were arrested for not having proper documentation to work in South Africa.
Officials from the department of labour said the restaurants failed to comply with the country’s minimum wage of R27.58 per hour. Two people from Babel and the human resources manager were arrested. A delivery man at Ocean Basket in Menlyn was also taken into custody.
Rose has to work hard to make more money through tips from the tables. On a good day, which is the end of the month, she can make as much as R2,000 a day. But on those days she will work from 10am to 10.30pm.
On average, she said, she takes home daily tips which add up to R600.
But, she said, the unfortunate part is she does not get all the money she makes through tips.
“Somehow my bosses want a share of the tips. If a tip is R100, I will only get R60. The rest will pay for dishes that were broken, the chef in the kitchen and cutlery. It angers me why I have to share my hard-earned money with a chef that the restaurant should be paying a salary,” she said.
Rose gets a day off after every six days and gets a lunch break.
She said it is not a deliberate decision by restaurant owners to hire foreign nationals, but the circumstances dictate so.
“Some people are not strong enough to work long hours like we do. We work really hard to get the little that we get. I think the job is demanding and taxing on the body that some end up feeling it is not worth it. Anybody is welcome to do the work, but they have to be willing to put in the effort that is required for one to survive in the job. That is, in my view, what decides who comes and stays in this job,” Rose said.
Nomzamo*, who has worked as a runner at a restaurant in Rosebank for the past six months, said it had been a nightmare.
Her job entails serving, setting tables and cleaning them, cleaning the floor and drying dishes.
Nomzamo starts her shift at 9.30am and is supposed to end at 9pm but often works until 10pm.
Her employers provide her with transport because there are no taxis to Berea at that time.
She is paid R3,000 a month, with no tips because she does not take food orders.
“I took this job because I had spent so many years not finding employment. I live with my sister, who is paying rent for me. What can I do with R3,000? Every day I have to spend R18 just to come to work.
“What hurts me the most is that the people who take dishes from me, put them in the dishwasher then take them out, get R5,000. They do less than half of what I do but still get paid more than I do.
“What has angered me about my situation is that our restaurant is made up of many Zimbabweans. Last week, the manager, also Zimbabwean, gave contracts to his compatriots and left us [the three] South Africans with nothing,” Nomzamo said.
A manager at another Rosebank restaurant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained why the sector seems to be dominated by those from outside South Africa.
“I have been doing this work for 33 years, it is good. Most people do not understand that there is money here. My workers earn about R6,000 basic salary per month but can make more than R6,000 on tips. We do not take a portion of their tips, therefore, they stay here because we treat them right.
What has angered me about my situation is that our restaurant is made up of many Zimbabweans. Last week, the manager, also Zimbabwean, gave contracts to his compatriots and left us [the three] South Africans with nothing.
— Nomzamo
“You have to understand if you are Zimbabwean, with no papers, desperate for an income, this is the only job that can empower you to achieve what you want to do. If you were to offer any of my workers a job in a comfortable office for R6,000, none of them will take it. They are comfortable here.
“It is easier to get a job in this sector than in construction or elsewhere. So people come because they can earn decent money,” the manager said.
Most restaurant workers did not want to talk, saying their employers have alerted them about the video and the raids by the department of employment and labour.
Wendy Alberts, CEO of the Restaurant Association of South Africa, said she felt last week's raids on restaurants had been deliberate attacks on the industry and that, even if the authorities have been acting on true and correct information, there were “much better ways to go about this”.
“You can’t use restaurants to clean up a historical mess. To use us as a platform puts restaurants on edge, staff on edge and leads to the arrests of innocent people over what’s actually an immigration issue,” she said.
“It’s a muddled up situation where TikTok has been used to report infringements or unfair labour practice and then you have the whole raid in which everything gets basketed together to include other issues like minimum wage, business compliance and working conditions,” Alberts said.
She said restaurants were required to adhere to all manner of business compliance, compounded by working condition requirements, and to adhere to the minimum wage. She said restaurant working conditions fell under a bargaining council agreement and could differ between restaurants.
“Employees need to be informed and get to an understanding on how the restaurant’s commission system works, how tips are shared, uniform rules, breakages. They need to understand how the place works and what their own contractual obligations are.
“We are aware of many waiters and bar staff who are very happy, who know how things work and make themselves R65,000 a month tax-free,” she said.
In terms of implementing the minimum wage, Alberts said there were different ways of achieving this.
She said home affairs and immigration issues — not generally part of the restaurant industry — had now wrongly been taken on as restaurant problems rather than a national issue affecting all businesses.
“We’ve come to a situation where people can make sweeping statements on social media and get the authorities to jump and intimidate staff as they go about inspections, unsure of what they are looking for.”
“There are much better ways of doing this. Yes, separate the bad apples, but don’t let the conversation get mixed up.”
She said while tips were generally excluded from wait-staff payment packages, this was another issue that fell under collective agreements as to how they are dispersed — staff need to know if they are for front of house, if they get shared with back of house, on what days are they paid out, if the restaurant has the right to deduct the costs they incur managing and paying out the tips, and understand that the restaurant is required to top up their share if it’s below minimum wage.
You can’t use restaurants to clean up a historical mess.
— Wendy Alberts, CEO of the Restaurant Association of South Africa
She said staffing was a seasonal issue for restaurants that preferred to keep permanent staff to a minimum for better control, then taking on extras when needed.
“Authorities using TikTok posts as a basis for raids makes room for everyone to post false allegations that are not backed up by proper fact. Like complaining about the high costs of a uniform dress code, particularly stuff that’s not branded. Did the waitress have to pay R1,000 for her uniform because she chose to buy at Zara and not Pep? And there can be misunderstandings, like a runner helping a waitress thinking they’re entitled to the full amount of a big tip when she only owes them a running fee,” Alberts said.
She said restaurants were generally small owner-run operations that were admin-heavy with a multitude of compliance and licence issues, making them soft targets.
Rosemary Anderson, Fedhasa chairperson, said it strongly supported the enforcement of labour regulation compliance.
“While recognising the complexities of foreign national employment, Fedhasa promotes best practices. The organisation advocates a balanced approach, protecting local workers' rights while ensuring lawful employment across the board, as essential for the sector's long-term viability.
Labour lawyer Jacques Parsons said some of the reactions after Molly Brave's video shocked him.
“I understand some of the managers were arrested in connection with places not adhering to paying the minimum wage. This is very strange in my experience. In a minimum wage dispute the normal route would be through the CCMA. The managers who were arrested for employing illegal workers, I can understand,” Parsons said.
When it comes to working only for tips, according to Parsons, it is mostly legal.
“You have two types of employment in the industry. Fixed-term and contracted workers. When I deal with restaurants we normally register the waiters as independent contractors. That means they work for themselves. In that case they don't have to be paid the minimum wage.”
When do they actually get paid the minimum wage? “If the waiter is employed in terms of the Labour Employment Act he must have a contract and be paid the minimum wage. If that contract includes breakages and shortages the employers are allowed to deduct them,” Parsons said.
However, labour lawyer Dustan Farrell disagrees.
“People must be paid a basic salary in line with the minimum wage. Calling them independent contractors won’t cut it.
“People are desperate for work and will do what they must to find employment. But that does not make what these employers are doing to their people fair or even legal.
“Making people work for only tips is an abuse of their human rights,” Farrell said.
Louis Koen, a lecturer in labour law at the University of Johannesburg, said waiting staff must be paid at least a basic salary in line with the minimum wage.
“The minister of labour put into effect sectoral determination 14 in 2017. A minister has the power to make regulations for a specific industry. There is one for domestic workers too.
“According to sectoral determination 14 all workers in the hospitality industry must be paid a basic salary that does not include tips,” Koen said.
“The determination makes provision for casual labourers by saying that if someone works less than four hours a day, their employer must pay them for at least four hours at the minimum wage,” Koen said.
*Not their real names.
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